enough is enough

Having been brought up to believe that you shouldn’t start a new project before you finish the previous one, it came as a bit of an epiphany for me about twenty years ago when someone giving a talk on creativity suggested that it was actually good to have more than one project on the go at the same time. Some people might suggest that I have taken this advice too literally and gone a bit far in the opposite direction.

On the whole my creative stash lives in my workroom in the basement, but knitting and crochet are sociable crafts that can be practised sitting on a comfortable chair while watching the telly. This has meant that my yarn craft project bags were beginning to silt up at one end of the sofa. It was getting difficult to find what I wanted and generally stressful. So a large part of today has been devoted to sorting out this horrible space.

In the process I discovered that my main current project was in a bag far too small for it, so extra balls of yarn were lolling around here there and everywhere. That has now been sorted into one large bag.

There's a large bag full of the knitted squares for blanket-making that I blogged about last week. These need to stay at hand or I will forget to do anything with them.
I also found at least three bags of random/leftover/spare yarn; a scarf project started and (probably) abandoned; and a bag with two colours of recycled sari yarn which I have yet to find the right project for.

Then there was the bag that holds my in-between-other-projects/use-up-leftovers project - a crochet sampler blanket that will eventually be sewn together in strips.

This is definitely not abandoned, but needs to be on the back burner at the moment because of other things on the go. That and the random bags have been relegated to the basement depths.

As has this little project bag with the yarn and pattern for Fugue tam and mittens by Kate Davies. I have actually knitted one of the mittens, but it came out too small so I need to start again. I can't risk relegating this one for too long or I will miss the hat and mittens season.

Also begging to be sorted was my needle bag and another tube of needles. When it's organised this bag is incredibly useful as it also contains a ring binder for patterns. While Steve was at the cinema this afternoon I sat on the floor with all the needles and a needle gauge sorting out pairs and batches of double-ended needles. All my printed-from-the-internet patterns are now in plastic sleeves in the ring binder.

Hiding under all sorts of other stuff was a jar of buttons that I didn't know was there and would definitely have been looking for sometime soon.

There were also two sewing projects that had come upstairs for one reason or another and now need to go back below stairs.

All has now been reorganised and restored. To the casual observer it probably doesn't look too different, as there are still two large project bags and a work basket in the corner, but I know what's there and I can lay my hands on it, so this post it brought to you with a smug sense of relief and I can spend the evening knitting!

saturday art and craft

It was a beautiful morning as I drove home along the river at 8am. The sun was coming through quite brightly. It had rained in the night and the water vapour held in the air wasn’t quite a mist or even a haze, but created a shivering golden pink light.

It was a lovely compensation for being up and out so early to deliver Steve to his stall at the Bristol Harbourside Craft Market where he’s selling Ruth’s and Hannah’s and his own work.

Later I visited Hannah who was doing a stint at the Drawn in Bristol pop up shop.
(photo credit: made in bristol - taken at the launch party last night)

Meanwhile Ruth’s work is also to be found at the Rostra Gallery in Bath.

saved by monkey and robot

Well I really thought I wasn't going to have anything for the daily blog challenge today. Until I captured the moment when two little girls and their grandad

watched Susan Jameson
reading from Auntie Hannah and Uncle Felix's book "Monkey & Robot" for the CBeebies bedtime story.

figgy pudding

For the first time ever my Christmas pudding actually has figs in it this year, so when the carol singers ask for some figgy pudding there actually is a slim chance of them having some!
As ever, I didn't have quite the right ingredients for the recipe (despite shopping specifically for several items yesterday). After yesterday's cake making extravaganza there weren't quite enough sultanas and I had completely failed to notice that the recipe specified dates as well as figs. I made up the difference with a few extra grams of the other fruits (figs, apricots and cranberries). We stirred and made wishes and now two small puddings are steaming away on the hob.

Rebecca at Poshyarns was talking yesterday about baking as meditation. She finds it calming. Much as I enjoy baking, I really can't say I find it soothing and the state of the kitchen afterwards is definitely not a joy. Just look at the state of that recipe page - it already looks like an heirloom recipe and I've only used it yesterday and today!

christmas cake

I made a Christmas cake today. The house smells lovely.

I don’t have a special recipe that I use every year. I’m quite happy to try new ones from time to time. I also think that a bought cake is perfectly acceptable when life is busy.

For quite a few years I used a Delia Smith recipe, but always had to change the constitution of the dried fruit mixture. She specifies 450g currants, 175g sultanas and 175g raisins. Now I really like dried fruit, but currants always seem such unappealing, mean, pinched little things by comparison with juicy raisins and sultanas. I quite often go with a Good Housekeeping recipe. Needing to sell magazines, they generally have a slightly different recipe each year with names like “the ultimate Christmas cake”, or “our best ever Christmas cake”.

I’ve taken the GH route this year. This one is called their "easiest ever"! The fruit mixture includes prunes and stem ginger – no currants and no mixed peel!
Unusually the recipe involves boiling the fruit and melting the butter and sugar so that the mixture goes into the oven already warm and takes less cooking time.

I didn’t have any Amaretto liqueur, so used port and added half a teaspoon of almond extract when the mixture came off the heat.
It looks good so far!

I love oxford

My first solo encounter with Oxford was not propitious. It was 1968 and I arrived by train for an interview at what was then Oxford College of Technology (now Oxford Brookes University). I got off the train and didn’t know which way to walk to get into the town. I spent quite a long time walking in the wrong direction before I discovered my mistake. By the time I discovered the city centre and realised that I still had to negotiate a bus ride to Headington I was distraught and rang my mother in floods of tears.

Strange then that I overcame my initial first impressions and went on the live in, or within easy reach of, Oxford for the next 35 years.

Because I came to live in Oxford as a student, I got to know it bit by bit. Its austere classical beauty seeped into my heart without the need for tourist sight-seeing. I finished growing up there; I kicked leaves in Christ Church Meadows; I studied; I swam in the river on May morning; I made lifelong friends; I learned how to punt in a straight(ish) line; I fell in love; I went to May Balls; I worked, I married and I raised a family within twelve miles of Carfax Tower.

So as we stepped down from the train in Oxford station this morning it was with a happy sense of anticipation of revisiting this beautiful city that I know so well. I knew it was going to be a day of treats.

The first was a visit to the Ashmolean Museum where Steve had pre-arranged a visit to the Western Art Print Room. He knew that the museum hold a collection of Turner watercolours. What you can see in the galleries of public art collections is only a fraction of what they have and most are willing to make other parts of the collections available to the public if you know what you want to see. Steve particularly wanted to see watercolours of Venice and an early drawing that Turner had made of the Ashmolean covered in scaffolding during an eighteenth century refurbishment. It was one of those marvellous white-glove experiences. We were presented with a large box of mounted watercolours and a small desk easel and left to revel in the experience of seeing the master’s work up close and personal. It was wonderful.

We had time after that for a wander around the galleries. We went in different directions; Steve to look at paintings and me to have a lovely mooch around ceramics.

Then we met a dear friend for a leisurely lunch at the Red Lion and talked and talked until all too soon it was time to get back on the train for home.

It was a grey and drizzly November day, but it was still beautiful. A lovely, lovely day.

photo credit: Steve Broadway

white hope

A little bit of hope on a grey day!

For at least seven years we have had a window box of white pelargoniums sitting on the outside sill of the window in our basement light-well . It’s very sheltered down there and although it doesn’t get a great deal of bright light the plants have thrived on benign neglect, getting taller and taller and flowering almost all year round. I really love them; they’re not as intense and showy as the red or pink ones I generally put on the front windowsill (and have to renew every spring), but I love their quiet persistence and delicate old-fashioned blooms.

This year I have begun to fear that they are on the way out. They had become impossibly “leggy” in the continuing search for light and were falling and breaking. I decided it was time to have a go at taking cuttings. (Foolproof according to the BBC gardening website). These are the results.
Not only have they taken and rooted, but they are bursting into flower as well. I’m sure a gardening purist would say that I should have nipped off the flower buds to give the roots more chance to develop, but I just couldn’t bear to. This year’s gardening has been deeply disappointing after my enthusiastic start blogged back in April, so I’m just taking a little bit of encouragement where I find it.