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.

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.

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.

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.