Get a grip

Something very strange and nice has happened to me over the past few weeks. I appear to have been welcomed into the warm embrace of what could be termed the 'mummy bloggerhood' via twitter and blogworld, with a few new followers and lots of new people's lives to read about and nod in agreement with. (It's also opened me up to a concept which quite frankly would scare the bejesus out of me if I didn't know that most of my Twitter followers don't actually want to read about the minutiae of my life, and that is tweeting a link to a newly published blog post. I used to have my blog linked to Facebook and a few of my FB friends found it from there, but since the squillion upgrades they've had that has disappeared. It feels very odd indeed to be proclaiming to the world at large that I've written something but hey, let's give it a go...)

But all this has led to a few roundabout conversations in my head about how much I can commit to write every week. When I started my blog I was commuting hours each day on the train; had no childcare responsibilities, a varied social and home life and consequently a large variety of things to write about. When I got pregnant I was still commuting and found it very therapeutic to blog about my weekly bump progress. When Gemma came along and I landed a local job with no commute, well look at the yearly archive of posts and the numbers for 2009 and 2010 speak for themselves. I joined Twitter over a year ago and have used it to tweet a random mix of personal, work/industry related stuff, and tv musings (Masterchef, Strictly et al), none on a regular basis. I follow a similarly assorted bunch of celebs, friends, work colleagues, and industry tweeters - a bit like the blogs I read, which I categorise in my reader under various headings - local, craft, personal, e-commerce, etc. One of those headings is 'baby' which is a catch all term for the mummy bloggers I've come across over the years. It's probably more relevant as a 'where did I first hear about this blogger and what did I immediately typecast them as' rather than what they actually blog about - all of them being intelligent, creative, articulate women with excellent taste in music, books, food, culture and all sorts of other interesting things. They just all happen to have kids and write entertainingly and movingly about them. This post is an interesting take on the 'mummy blogger' phenomenon and actually made even more interesting for the comments after it.

So why I am I so hesitant about becoming part of this throng? Like anyone I crave acceptance to a group, and perhaps not like anyone am paralysed with worry when I feel I'm being judged or not accepted. However - I know this is not happening to me at the moment and it shows my overanalytical internal nagging at the issue at hand. I was tagged in a meme the other day - the first time ever - and it totally freaked me out. Not because I don't have 7 things to say about myself that are faintly interesting (eh-hem well more likely I don't) but because firstly time seems to be of the essence with these things and once a Twitter day has gone by everyone has moved onto the next thing, and I haven't had a moment to sit down and write anything until now. If I didn't do it what WOULD people think?? Secondly, it wouldn't occur to me to write a blog post about something like that ordinarily, so why should being tagged make things different?

I'm sure I am flouting all sorts of blog etiquette rules here and probably ruling myself out of any meaningful relationship building with my new cyber friends. Most have probably realised by now that they're not going to get much out of me other than a few tweets now and again rather than a chatty conversation; and a blog post once in a blue moon. In turn I will still enjoy reading the new blogs I've found and will ping back a tweet to a comment that particularly resonates with me. But just as I don't call myself a craft blogger because I'm a member of Ravelry and knit occasionally; or a food blogger because I made some jam last November, I don't really feel I can call myself a mummy blogger because I sometimes write about Gemma.

In fact looking at recent posts I seem to be writing an awful lot about whether or not I'm going to continue writing and what type of writing that is and the fact that I don't write as much as I used to. This cannot be good for anyone. Draw the line. Onwards and upwards. My next post will be about compost heaps, or estate agents, or something.

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.

Mixed feelings

This post marks a number of things for me - the end of my maternity leave, the start of a new job, Gemma starting nursery, and another rather emotional watershed which I'll come onto later. It's a bit cheeky of me to hardly post at all this year and now offer up a huge rambling discourse but bear with me..

At the beginning of November, I started a new job at Oxfam. Earlier this summer I got a call from a recruiter, and as I was always planning to go back to my previous role full time in January after my maternity leave, I initially said I wasn't interested in the job they were describing to me. Then the magic words 'based in Oxford' were uttered as well as the organisation involved, and - well, I quickly became quite a little more than interested. There followed a couple of late nights frantically getting my CV in order and an interview where 'winging it' would be a generous description of my approach, and I was offered the job as Head of E-Commerce. Brilliant!

One of the really nice things about it all was the fact that Oxfam have a workplace nursery on site, and luckily there was a place for Gemma in the under-two's room. Towards the end of October we started settling in sessions, starting with an hour of me and her meeting everyone and playing together, through me leaving her for longer and longer periods, until a couple of weeks ago she had her first full day there. She goes two days a week while I am at work part time, then from January we are both five days a week. She absolutely LOVES it. I almost feel guilty picking her up at the end of the day as she is clearly having a ball, and all the staff comment about how she's always happy and smiling and laughing. It's made it so much easier for me to end my maternity leave and go back to work, even with starting a new job, knowing that she's happy and cared for during the day. And having debated the pros and cons of going back to work in one of my previous (all too rare, this year anyway) posts it has cemented in my mind that it is utterly the best thing for us both. Hooray all round.

So why the mixed feelings? Part of it is that while I am really enjoying my new job, and finding it a fascinating organisation to work for, it is quite hard to get into it on two days a week. I know come January I will be desperate to get back to the two days on, five days off routine (sounds bliss, doesn't it?) but I've never in my career had to get my head around things on such a part-time basis. Luckily I have a great new team, new boss and new colleagues who are fantastically understanding and accommodating and insistent that I take these first few months as pure induction time and don't do any actual work. This is just a time thing - I'll get used to it very soon and before I know it, it'll be January anyway..

The main reason for my wibbliness at the moment is more personal though still baby-related. For those who aren't parents and probably also those who haven't breastfed, the following ramble probably isn't going to be of massive interest, so feel free to skip. Normal service to be resumed shortly. I wanted to get my thoughts and feelings on the subject down though, before time blunted them a bit.

So, it's come to the time when I have made the decision to stop breastfeeding Gemma. I always knew I would breastfeed my child from birth, unless there were any physical reasons why I couldn't, and thankfully both of us got the hang of it relatively quickly. My initial plan was to breastfeed until she went onto solids at 6 months old, and then see what happened then. What happened was, we found out she had a cow's milk intolerance, and couldn't take dairy without coming out in hives. As most standard formulas are based on cow's milk, this made it an easy decision to carry on BF for her milk feeds, as I didn't want her to have too many soy products in her diet. We went through a dodgy period at around 7-8 months when she was biting me a lot while feeding - YOUCH! - and I nearly gave up then, but persevered and she got over it. I had a vague idea in my mind that I would wean her either at 12 months, or when she started to walk, whichever came first (at current progress the birthday will definitely arrive first...!).

But now, at ten and half months old, I can tell my supply is diminishing, and quite quickly too. I was BF for her early morning and bedtime feeds, with her having a cup of soy formula in the afternoon, and especially at bedtime, she still seems to enjoy the comfort and close contact. However I can tell it's taking longer and longer for the milk to come through; and there isn't anywhere near as much as there used to be. Occasionally she gets frustrated at both of these things and that's not great for either of us, and of course I need to make sure she's getting enough milk on a daily basis anyway.

This morning then, I gave her a cup of formula when she woke up. After a few confused grabbings she realised what was going on and absolutely wolfed it down, confirming in my mind that I'd made the right decision. But at the same time I was a bit downhearted. Surely she should have been more upset about the lack of boob? Tonight I breastfed her bedtime feed. It was fine. I think it was for the last time though - I'll give her a cup tomorrow night. I want her to become able to be physically independent from me and I want other people (Ali, grandparents) to be able to put her to bed at night. I know this is the right step forward. But it feels so strange and sad - only for me obviously (apart from the slight change in bedtime routine I don't think Gemma will take long to get over it) - and emotional. I have completely loved being able to feed my child and knowing I have given her a great start in life. I've felt so close to her as a result and I am sure it helped us to bond. It's been a lot cheaper too ;o) And this is a step forward for us, not a bad thing at all. So forgive the self-indulgence of this post, but I'm glad I got it out of my system, as a marker for lots of things that are ending but more importantly a whole new chapter that is beginning - for both of us.

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

Eco-unfriendliness

With the impending arrival to our family it’s become a lot harder recently to plan for and be as eco-friendly as I would want to be.

Eco-pluses:

1. We compost everything that’s compostable (but we don't have a wormery)
   
2. Use Ecover for most of our detergents, cleaning products etc
3. (In theory) have an efficient condensing boiler
4. Get an organic veg box delivered every week
5. Recycle glass, cans, paper every week (though the council won’t take cardboard and we don’t save it to recycle at the tip, which is bad)
6. Buy local produce whenever we can vs. air freighted and support local businesses
7. Buy organic food, clothes, toiletries etc vs. non organic if possible (and affordable!)
8. Try and reduce our packaging wherever possible – use cloth bags for shopping (as often as we remember, which to be fair is about 80% of the time)
9. Garden organically
10. Bought a rotary airer* for our washing this summer and use it to dry our clothes outside
11. Plan to use washable cloth nappies not disposables
12. Cook almost all meals from scratch (I guess this is sort of eco friendly, as we would never buy ready meals and rarely if ever get takeaways other than the odd self-indulgent fish and chips from the chippie round the corner, which counts as supporting local businesses anyway!)

* or birley for those from north of the border…

Eco-bads:

1. After a few performance glitches and some internet searching we realised our boiler may not be as efficient as we thought when it was installed…
2. I love an open fire and will happily burn loads of logs and coal even when it’s not really that cold
3. As a result of number 11 above, we’ve just bought a tumble drier. There’s no way I am draping wet nappies over radiators in January. If the baby had been coming in June I might have risked it and hoped to be able to put them outside to dry but it ain’t gonna happen in the middle of winter.
4. When working at home during the recent cold snap I’ve had the heating on all day rather than stick an extra jumper on. I can see that from 5th December, when I’m at home all the time, and especially after Chewie arrives in January, the heating bill will be enormous this winter.
5. Prefer to buy new than second hand (though we are getting a lot of newborn hand-me-downs from Archie which is brilliant and so is a sort of eco-plus.)
6. Don’t think twice about jumping in the (petrol-guzzling sports) car and driving to see friends, family, do the shopping, etc which we could in theory do on public transport
7. I don’t think we have ever even attempted to measure our carbon footprints and don’t make a proper effort to avoid flying etc although we do like taking holidays in the UK and I foresee more of them will be UK based in future!

So overall it appears that we are doing more good to the planet than bad, however I do think our bads are big enough to outweigh the small effort of the goods. Must do better - watch this space...

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)

26 weeks

I gave my official maternity leave notification in at work today. Now it's all getting very real, as real as the list of projects I need to complete before I leave which unfortunately isn't getting any smaller. It's an odd feeling, speaking to project managers about activity and discussing media plans which somebody else will have to make sure are signed off after I've left. However, I still have enough weeks left (9 and a bit weeks before my last day, 8 and a bit working weeks [Ali and I have a week off in October] and counting, ohmygod) for it not to be too daunting. Yet.

Physically, as the bump gets bigger and heavier, so I become more unwieldy and uncomfortable. Can't get through the night without getting up for a wee any more (reminiscent of those early weeks) and can't sit in one place for more than about 40 minutes without the base of my spine screaming and my back aching. Restless legs in the evening have been ongoing for a while, apparently tonic water and / or bananas are meant to be good for this but so far it's been manageable. The maternity pillow is great now I've got used to it. Getting more tired again (early morning alarms, as it's now pitch dark at 5.55am, are becoming very hard to take).

Current battle is to try and retain some semblance of chillout time at weekends for the rest of the year. We've had a run of busy ones and until the end of October that looks like it'll continue, but November gets a bit easier and by December, my beached whale month, it's only antenatal classes to look forward to and then the waiting game starts.

We had our friends Matt and Nickiy over at the weekend for a trip to Cardiff to the Great British Cheese Festival. The day was good, though on a bit of a smaller scale from last year. As I wasn't allowed to consume either cider or soft / blue / unpasteurised cheeses it was a bit more abstemious for me than for the others but I did buy some very self indulgent Burnt Sugar fudge which is pure caramel sugar and cream and bloody scrumptious. In the evening I cooked a thai veggie curry and the talk turned to baby names. I won't bore you with all the ridiculous ones that the, erm, more drunken of the crew came out with but the upshot is that Ali is now calling the bump 'Chewie' short for Chewbacca. I'm in 2 minds on this, part of me thinks it's quite funny, the other part is a little concerned that it refers to an enormous hairy space monkey who also happens to be a boy. What if I have a little lady inside me? Sadly though I think this nickname will stick for the next 14 weeks.

Finally, we ordered some of these a while ago. The jungle ones arrived last week and I can't wait til we've furnished the baby's room so we can put them up!

diverting widgetness

This seems to be spreading rather quickly at the moment. A viral marketer's dream, I'm sure...! It reminds me of drunken eveings playing games of the 'daddy or chips' variety (mainly involving 'would you shag xxxx from I.T. or xxxx from accounts' type of questions sadly enough). Have a go - it's the black box on the right.

Yet more silly names

Great news that Andy Murray is through to the semi-finals of the US Open. Slightly less good news that he's facing world #1 Rafael Nadal, as unless he produces a mighty mighty upset, he'll be out. However, all this pales into insignificance when you look at the guy Rafa beat to get to the semis. US player MARDY FISH???!!! Phenomenal! I'm assuming 'mardy' isn't used as a term of mild abuse in the US like it is over here but as names go, it beats Bershawn hands down.

Eh?

Watching the Olympics on the BBC website (it's addictive) and I've just seen that a US 400m (male) runner is called LaShawn Merritt. There's also a 400m hurdler called Bershawn Jackson. LaShawn, Bershawn, what next? Reshawn, Sheepshawn, Duhshawn, the mind boggles. Bershawn, though. What a name for a child.

Interweb paranoia

I just Googled myself. Don't ask me why - I don't know myself - it was a random impulse in between work email answering. My LinkedIn profile came up at the top, which I wasn't desperately pleased to see but I'm sure I can fix that (in fact I just have, now). Then there was an old BBC article from when I was still working at Virgin very early on, when I commented about the launch of Napster into the UK. Get me, media pundit. Most alarmingly I saw my Facebook public profile appear at number 3. Now, I *know* I've blocked this from appearing to the world and coming up on Google so I was more than a bit shocked to see this. So I clicked through, and it appears I have a namesake in London, whose profile is public and thus searchable by Google. Thankfully mine is not. Actually I have 3 namesakes, as there's another one who has no friends and no profile, and a third one in Ontario.

It's kind of comforting to know I can control what information I put out there about myself on the internet, especially after a couple of weeks where my Yahoo email account has been hacked *twice* and some bloody spammer bastard has got into my account, mailed all my contacts with rubbish about some random electronics website and then deleted the sent messages so I had no idea what was going on until a few friends politely emailed me, assuming I would like to know what 'I' had sent them. Yahoo themselves were completely crap, stubbornly asserting that I had been the recipient of spam not unknowingly mailed it out, so I've given up contacting them and just changed my password instead. If it happens again I'll be going to gmail.

Too many t-shirts

Whenever I get a new email from Threadless or howies, or see the new threadless designs on my bloglines feed, it’s oh so tempting to purchase a new one. Threadless is a lot cheaper than howies (being priced in $$ after all) but then there’s the slight eco-guilt of having the t-shirt flown across the world to get to me rather than trucked in a Parcelforce van from Cardigan Bay. But the threadless T’s are brilliant, all unique designs and limited editions and some of them very very cute. The ones I currently own are shown for your delight here, my favourite probably being ‘7.00’ which shows a little girl sitting under a cuckoo clock reading a book, lost in her own imaginary world. As a child I was very, erm, bookish, and whenever we went on visits to family or friends I’d always take my latest read along so I could plonk myself in a corner somewhere on my own, away from the grown ups and the other kids. Introvert, moi?

Howies T's are equally great - all organic cotton so lovely and soft, and also great designs. I remember the first time I bought one for Ali about 6 years ago, attracted by a piece in Marketing magazine about an up and coming Welsh clothing company who had a cool website and were still relatively unknown. The first 2 tees I bought him were 'Le Velo' (I think the Tour de France was on at the time) and a bright grass green one with white text on the chest simply saying 'Bill Hicks'. After the initial 'hhm, not sure about these, he was converted, as was I. In fact I'm wearing a howies sundress as I type.

Anyway I’ll probably continue to buy more t-shirts and stuff my drawers to bursting. Unlike Ali I am quite ruthless when it comes to chucking out clothes that I haven’t worn for 12 months or more but not quite so disciplined when it comes to buying new stuff… I do find it very hard to send a cool tee to the charity shop though.

Smashing word of the day

From Dictionary.com:

Cockaigne \kah-KAYN\, noun: An imaginary land of ease and luxury. Apparently comes from the Middle English 'cokaygne' and is ultimately adapted or derived from a word meaning 'cake' . Isn't that lovely? I quite like the idea of a land of ease and luxury at the moment, I imagine it to be a bit like a permanent holiday in Italy...

Stern talking to

If this blog were an allotment I'd have had a nasty letter from the council by now telling me in no uncertain terms to get my act in gear or they will kick me out. Luckily the blog police don't appear to be bothered that my output has been less than prolific over the last few months so I can update you on what's been going on and with any luck do a bit better in July. As Deborah pointed out at work today it's all downhill now, the longest day has come and gone and the nights are drawing in already. Fabulous.

So to get some semblance of order back to things I'll use the loose tags I made up as categories and take it from there. I'll post them as separate posts, not to make the number of June's posts look good or anything compared to May (ha!) but because I know I have to be in a very leisurely mood to read any kind of massive post in my Bloglines feeds and it's easier to digest in smaller chunks I'm sure.

First off then, books. Not much to report here, I missed our last bookgroup at the beginning of June (a shame as the author was Henning Mankell, a Swedish crime writer I really like) but did get through a hell of a lot on our recent holiday, more of which later. I finished Suite Francaise, Roddy Doyle's 'Oh Play That Thing'; 'In the Miso Soup' by Riu Murakami (a little disappointing, I was expecting something a lot more gripping), the next bookgroup choice, Persephone Books' 'Someone at a Distance' by Dorothy Whipple (excellent) and am now wading through 'The Virgin in the Garden' by A.S. Byatt which is a bit of a struggle if you want to know, but I feel I ought to persevere and see if I start to care about any of the characters. Hardly a glowing review I know.

Holidays, family stuff, and garden to come! They'll be a bit less brief than this section anyway.

a surprising discovery

I've been reading Non-Working Monkey's blog for a while now and this morning, while trawling my Bloglines feeds, I find out that NWM is in fact female. Why this should suprise me I don't know, but the writing style and complete don't give a shit air of all the posts really honestly led me to visualise a mid 40s male. Well, well. If I'd ever looked at her profile on Blogger I would of course have found this out by now, but it was one of the blogs recommended by another blogger which I just randomly added to my list of feeds and became hooked on. Well, you've got to be intrigued by someone whose interests are listed as:

Not working; idling; absinthe; small clay pipes; fezzes; Canada; veterinary pharmaceutical research pathology; autopsies; haematology rock; beavers; moose; Pierre Trudeau; armchairs; wrestling; squirrel pest control; cake.

Another caustic blogger is Decorno, whose blog Vodka has no Carbs I have just found and which is brilliant, containing as it does a LOT of swearing.

Flight of the conference attendees

I am sure I saw this actor on my Easyjet flight back from Palma to Luton last night (after a very enjoyable work conference for 3 days).
Quite why he would be flying to Luton is a mystery to which I may never find the answer, and I'm not even sure it was him, but the speculation passed some time on the flight. My celeb spotting has been a bit on the slow side since seeing Vivienne Westwood on a flight from Munich to Heathrow last year. Maybe I should be travelling on budget airlines more often.

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.

sorry

to those of you reading the last post in Bloglines. For some reason it has decided to strip the venue of my boozy lunch in London out, though you can still see it in the original post. Very bizarre - reminds me of old Victorian novels where they say 'Mr. Twombley of _____shire' all over the place. It was Covent Garden, by the way. Should you be bothered.

Peep show

Thank you domesticali's blog chum Di (whose knitting blog I will be subscribing to forthwith) for this fantastic and great big grin-inducing link. I've never come across Peeps before but when Ali and I are in New York in May I'll definitely be trying to find some. In the meantime this slideshow is ruddy wonderful. Enjoy...

Cupboard Love

I don't think I have got so excited about a piece of furniture since our bed was delivered from Lombok 3 and a half years ago. But on Saturday our new kitchen dresser arrived, and I can't stop looking at it and stroking it - very worrying I'm sure.
It is a beautiful thing though - we had it built to the measurements we wanted and we specified exactly what we needed it to do - play host to our cookbooks, glassware, and all the bowls, serving dishes and gadgets that used to reside in the kitchen units that were the most awkward to get at. There's also enough room on the top of the bottom cupboard bit to put nice things like flowers* and even use as a spare work surface if need be. It's made from reclaimed pine by the wonderful folks at Foxwood and I love it. It suits the space perfectly and what was a pretty empty wall space now seems homely and inviting without being too cluttered. Of course, it's taken us 18 months since we moved back in after doing the extension to be able to afford to buy any new furniture at all, so at this rate we might get a new dining table in 2010...



* thanks Ali for the last 6 years :o)