New Year Treat Box

A little while ago I reported on the cheering properties of the November Treat Box from Cookston Crafts and mentioned that I had ordered the Hogmanay one as well. It being Hogmanay today I have opened the box. And here's a photo.

Wool ( I had the choice and opted for DK),  a pattern, bath salts, a scented candle, a New Year card and a packet of mixed shortbread biscuits. There's a cast on for the pattern being held on Facebook this afternoon which I thought might be fun to join in, so I have wound the wool in readiness. 

The colours (which the photo really doesn't do justice to) were inspired by the torchlight processions held in some places in Scotland at New Year, so on Ravelry I shall probably call the project something pretentious like the  Up Helly A' cowl. Photos of that will doubtless appear in due course.

Meanwhile a Happy New Year to all when it comes. I am hoping very hard that 2021 will be better than 2020, but trying not to say anything that might jinx that very understandable wish. 

The Sparklies Number 1

I'm generally not much of a one for sparkly stuff, especially when it comes to wool but I've got  a few bits of sparkly wool around and a few sparkly projects underway. Here's the first one to be finished.

I'd like to say that these were as complex to knit as they look but they weren't really. I enjoyed making them and they are fun to wear - I finished them yesterday and tried them out on a chilly walk today. You'll have to take my word for it that they sparkle, there is some silver stellina in there but it doesn't really show up. 

We feel we should get back into the habit of daily walks which we managed more or less all the time during the first and most serious lockdown but which have become less regular recently - although not abandoned  altogether. The problem is that circular walks that don't involve walking on surfaces other than roads are few and far between in Orkney; lots of rough ground walking available which I don't like and lots of long linear walks which are no good if you have to drive to the start and walk for miles there and then do the same walk in reverse (I mean that's not the end of the world, but I prefer circular ones). But we were listing some of the ones there are and we could probably do a week locally without repeating ourselves. So we'll see how that goes.  

As far as the mitts go, I had expected them to use up most of my skein of wool, but they didn't. I have enough to do a matching hat if I can decide on which pattern to use. But that's not a job for today. 

A Tale of Two Cakes

I didn't make a Christmas cake this year. There didn't seem a lot of point. Son No 2 doesn't like it and the OH, although he will eat the cake part always leaves his marzipan and icing for me. Even if you eke the cake out over several weeks, that's a lot of sugar for one person. And a lot of hard work for very little payback when you think about it. So I didn't make one. However I couldn't contemplate Christmas without one altogether so when the OH went out the other day to do the last minute shopping I asked him to get a 'small' Christmas cake. Which he did, and very pretty it is too. Tesco's finest!

The December box for the baking subscription, a Winter Spice Cake,  came a few days ago, and I have managed to do that before Christmas. After a fashion. Here's my version - 

This is not quite the version on the recipe photo. In addition to the cake, you were supposed to make a spicy biscuit dough, cut out various Christmas shaped bits, cook them and use the resulting biscuits to decorate the outside and the top of the cake. Well the spirit was willing but the cookie dough was not. It didn't seem to matter how long I left it in the fridge to chill, it just never got dry/robust enough to cut. So I gave up, grated some dark chocolate over the top and decorated it with a sprig of artificial holly. I think it looks very nice. And it will 'do',  in fact more than 'do', as a birthday cake for the OH on 27th of the month. 

Niles!

 A title that probably only makes sense if you are familiar with Kenneth Branagh's film of Henry V. If you're not, I'd highly recommend it. 

Anyway last week I went off to my lovely local nail decorator and got my nails 'done' for Christmas/winter. 

Snowflakes, trees, holly and leaping reindeer on a sparkly red background. I love them And it's as well to have something to cheer us up these days, eh? 

And talking of

the cross stitch orament, here it is! 

OK it isn't the most exciting or complex piece of stitching I've ever done, but after the problems I had earlier in the year doing cross stitch I was just pleased to be able to tackle this. It's on aida with a largish stitch count so not the sort of thing I would choose to to work on normally, but it was quick and relaxing to do and hopefully Son No 2 will like it enough to hang it up. 

Baking Subscription November

 

This was butterscotch popcorn cake.

I was a bit wary of it because my sister, who took out a subscription to the same baking club a  few months ago,  got hers done first and reported that they hadn't liked it at all. Which was a bit off putting. 

However I've done it now and I have to say that we did quite like it. I got to make brown butter sauce for the first (and probably last time), ditto the popcorn. We're not fans of popcorn at the best of time and putting it on a cake seems a bit odd. But actually it was fine.

Naturally the butter cream, which was made with the brown butter, was supposed to be piped on in rosettes and equally naturally I just got out my big spoon and palette knife. It wasn't  day to try piping rosettes - but then when is it ever? 

Do I See Some New Wool There?

 

Yes you do. Well spotted. It was like this ....

It was the Glasgow School of Yarn in November, a wool festival that had been planning a triumphant return after a few years 'off'. As it turned out, 2020  wasn't the best time for that, was it? It changed, like so much else, into a virtual event. This was a good thing in many ways as it meant I didn't spend any money and I didn't acquire any more wool, both of which I would have done at the real life event if it had happened. 

The virtual event did however bring to my attention a number of very talented Indie Wool Dyers/Sellers of Wool and Knitting Related stuff based n Scotland and  that I hadn't known about before. I drooled at the pics of their stuff on the GSOY website, visited lots of  individual websites and signed up for a lot of Newsletters. 

And after a wee while because I was feeling a bit grey one day I ordered a Cookston Crafts Treat Box, which was going to contain wool and - er- treats. The clue is in the name. You can opt just to have the wool, but if you're on a mission to brighten up your life sometimes it takes a little bit more than just wool. No really. It does. 

I did wonder if, when it arrived,  it might be a bit of a let down or I might feel I hadn't got value for money but in the event it was quite the reverse. In addition to 100g of wool and some pattern suggestions for using it, there was: a small cross stitch kit for a Christmas ornament (which I have just about finished and which I'm sending to son no 2 for his tree), a bottle of raspberry lemonade, two huge fudge bites (I let the OH have one of them which I thought was a bit above and beyond to be honest) , lip balm and body wash from Shetland Soap, a sachet of Soak for handwashing wool, a colourful postcard and a beautiful bar of hand made soap. 

The whole thing was indeed a treat. 

And I've ordered the one for Hogmanay .... 

Gordon Bennett, where have the last four days gone?

Have a picture of the completed tree

In real life I am finding that the lights rather overpower all the other things on there, but perhaps that's my eyes? Anyway it looks very nice, and Christmassy.

Today is 'get Christmas wrapped up' day; it's not an annual thing but I just decided yesterday that by the end of today I wanted all the cards written and posted, and all the parcels for foreign parts that hadn't already gone sent off, and all the stuff that we're now going to have to send to Glasgow because Son No. 2 can't  get to Orkney for Christmas, wrapped and ready to go to the post. 

I'm almost there. I have to say that, after a run of fairly relaxed Decembers, Christmas stress has re-manifested itself with a bang this year, which is probably why I want as much of the prep finished as soon as possible. We have been perilously close to the pre-Christmas meltdown on several occasions and I really would like to avoid it if at all possible. 

And now I must go and write notes to go in cards. Only six still to do. 

More Knitting. And coming as a surprise to no-one -

 - it's more socks.

Rachel Coopey's pattern Thornfield, which I have had for ages knitted in toshmerino light which I have also had for a long time. 

These are destined for Son No 1 as his second pair of birthday socks. I'd done  a pair ages ago, but when his wish list came and it had socks on it then  I decided I'd see if I could get another pair done. Unlike his father and brother he is not a fan of brightly coloured socks, so the grey seemed a suitable choice and I'm hoping he won't think the pattern 'too fancy', especially after the hours I spent knitting it. Although it's not as complicated as it looks. 

In other knitting news the Debbie Abrahams mystery blanket, abandoned for a while for Christmas knitting, edges towards completion. I have three and a half more squares to complete, then a million and one ends to weave in, strips to sew together and then a multi row edging to attach. That sounds a lot, but believe me the end is in sight. Although I can't see me ever tackling  Japanese short row shaping again. 

100 Books to Read Poster - No 23

So, this one was The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks. 

This is a well known account by a world famous neurologist about some of the patients he encountered and as well as giving a description of their various conditions he uses their cases as the basis for brief meditations on the nature of what it is to be human, whether there is such a thing as a soul, and how the rest of society should treat those who suffer from what he describes as neurological 'deficits and excess'. 

It's quite an old book now (1970s) in terms of science writing and it shows. It was written as a popular science book but compared to say  Ben Goldacre's Bad Science, which was about the fourth book I read from the poster, it's a lot less accessible. A lot of technical vocabulary, a lot of references to doctors who went before, without a precis of their work, which would have been helpful, and a lot of assumed knowledge which the lay person would not have. 

Interesting and I'm glad I have read it just because it is so famous, but in places it was just unfathomable for me, so I have to rate it as a miss. I didn't get an awful lot out of it, but to change a common phrase slightly, 'It's not the book, it's me'. 

 

Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree

 

So yesterday we put up the tree and got the lights on. Today we'll put on the decorations and that way I get two blog posts for the price of one! 

The OH was quite discombobulated by its size. We have always considered it to be a large tree, and indeed it is, but it is totally dwarfed now by the coffee tree. Very disconcerting! 

It's Advent!

 

And I bought the OH an advent calendar. We don't usually bother with chocolate ones but somehow it seems important to make a little bit more of Christmas in this Covid Year than previously. I am hoping that there will not be too many of those 'eclairs' lurking behind the windows as neither of us likes them. 

Meanwhile I have one of the inimitable Jacquie Lawson advent calendars on my computer, this year with a Nordic theme. 

Making more of Christmas also accounts for the fact that I have allowed the OH to put up the tree today - far too early in a normal year - and the lights are on, but not the decorations yet. That's tomorrow's job. He has also dug out a Christmas jumper and no doubt these will be rotated from now until Christmas. I should probably take photos of those too.  Today's is a Blue Jays one, bought for him as a Christmas present several years ago by Son No 1. 

Happy Advent everyone! 

Farmyard Friends

well, fields rather than a yard really, but farmyard sounds better. 

We took what we've started to call out 'donkey walk' yesterday. It takes us past a field with - yes, a donkey in it. And also another one a bit further on with some rare breed pigs. The gate to the pig field has a notice on it which encourages you to feed the pigs and gives a list of what they like to eat. Which actually is nice. 

At my suggestion we took a few carrots with us. The idea was to give two to the donkey and anther two to the pigs. We hadn't foreseen the presence in the donkey field of a very pushy pony, so by the time we got to the pigs we had no carrots left. The walk is circular so next time we'll do it in the other direction, to make sure the pigs don't lose out. 

Meanwhile some pics

Charitable Endeavours

Someone in one of my Ravelry groups had a shout out a wee while ago for knitted things which the Crisis group in Edinburgh could include in their packages for the temporarily housed homeless at Christmas (temporary housing courtesy of the pandemic of course). I sent off some hats that I'd done for the Seafarer's Society since, also due to the pandemic, there had been no  seafarers calling in Orkney  in need of hats since March, and also a pair of socks that were lying about because I hadn't liked them when they were done (or indeed liked the wool which I had bought from someone else on the strength of a photograph where it turned out the colour reproduction had not been good) 

And over the last couple of weeks I've been kitting more socks for them, using up stash sock wool. I'd hoped to do four pairs but I don't have time; however  I finished the third pair today. Voila!

A friend is coming round for coffee on Friday (much rejoicing over that too!) and bringing more hats and they will go off at the weekend. And I will probably produce a few more pairs over the next few months ready for next Christmas. Because even if the pandemic is behind us there will still be homeless people who need care and attention and warm feet, and I suspect Crisis will still be there doing their best to fulfil the need. 

More Fun to Watch than Experience

We went into town earlier this afternoon and I fell out of the car in the library car park. 

I'd left my handbag in there because I was only going to drop a couple of books off on the returns table, and I tripped over the straps as I got out and ended up on the ground. 

It felt like it happened in slow motion and according to the OH it looked that way too. On the bright side I had decided against changing into clean trousers this morning, putting that off until tomorrow. It would have been 10x as annoying had I got clean trousers dirty and soggy. On the not quite so bright side it's a lot further to fall from the Range Rover than it would have been from our previous car, the Citroen. 

I wasn't particularly hurt, although the ground was wet and cold and hard and I expect I have a few bruises forming. I'm still glad we went to town though as we were delivering the info to the accountant for the tax return and it's always good to get that off our hands. Every year we say we'll sort it out earlier and every year we fail miserably to do so. Given that our tax affairs are not particularly complicated and that I used to earn my living looking after other people's it amazes me that it it seems like such an awful chore, because nowadays it really doesn't take long. 

Anyway it's a weight off my mind to have delivered the paperwork and I'm going to settle down now in front of the fire with some knitting. Tomorrow is parcelling stuff up for Canada day, and then putting on a face that will not say 'How much did you say that would cost to send' when I get to the Post Office. Ah, the joys of having children who live abroad! 

Easy Peasy Ice Lanterns

 Dear Ms Allsopp,

I enjoy watching your ever so slightly bonkers Christmas preparation shows every year and goodness knows it would be lovely to have some of those coloured ice lanterns you demonstrated yesterday which are so easy to make with balloons, food colouring and water. 

The only slight problem is that my freezer is generally full of food and there is insufficient space to place even one  water filled balloon in there let alone the half dozen that would be needed for a reasonably satisfying ice lantern show. 

Still keep up the good work. I'm sure there are hundreds of people out there with empty freezers, kept for just such projects. 

best wishes

Anne

Another Miss!

The current Saturday Slaughters read is The Way of All  Flesh by Ambrose Parry, Ambrose Parry being a pen name for books written by Christopher Brookmyre, a writer of crime fiction with a big following in Scotland, and his wife, Marisa Haetzman, who is an anaesthetist. 

It is set in Edinburgh at the time of Queen Victoria. The main male protagonist is a just qualified medical doctor with a shady past, no visible means of support and a predilection for getting into trouble. The main female protagonist is a maid in an upper class (medical) household who is clever but held back from fulfilling her potential because of her gender and her class. I am falling asleep even as I type this list of clichéd characterisations and situations. (To make matters worse the maid looks after yet another C19 cliché, the verging on desperate spinster. Just to underline the difficulties of the women of the time, although it's really not necessary,  maid and mistress are reading and discussing Jane Eyre and are of course in total admiration of the brave heroine who self defines as being worthy of a space in society without a man. Despite the fact that the minute said man is free she snatches his hand off when he offers her marriage.)

The big not quite USP of this book is that the newly qualified doctor has been taken on as an apprentice by Joseph Simpson, a real life medical doctor who pioneered the use of anaesthetics in Midwifery, to the great relief of Queen Victoria and many many women since. 

I am giving up on this book because  - boredom really. I do not need to read any further to know that some of the plot will hang on a back street abortionist/doctor performing illegal abortions badly, because why otherwise have they chosen Dr Simpson to house our hero and heroine? I just cannot be bothered. I will however be attending the discussion because I want to be sure I am not wrong on this point. And if I am I shall come here and say so. 

Meanwhile if I want Edinburgh-set Victorian crime I have on Audible all twelve seasons of  BBC4's  Inspector McLeavy. Twelve series, none of them fewer than six episodes, some longer and do you know what? Not one back street butcher in a single one of them. You see, it can be done. 

Where Have I Been?

Well nowhere, which is part of the problem. I've been home, doing the various restricted-by-virus home things that I do, not finishing much and finding little of note to say. However I suppose that having little to say is a feature of the times we live in and should be recorded as much as anything else.  

I finished a couple of puzzles. One I knew before I did it was destined for the library/charity shop pile. It's fun to do - but only  the first time really. 

and then I did a little 500 piece one that I  knew wouldn't take me long. It's a keeper.

Having finished that I have now pulled out a much older one that was designated 'do once more and give away' and I hope to start that later today.

On the knitting front I've done lots of knitting without finishing much apart from this scarf, which is for a friend's  Christmas present. It's in Rowan Kidsilk Haze which is beautifully light and soft and warm, which makes it wonderful for scarves, but it is also an absolute trial to knit with.

I also finished the Saturday Slaughters book club book, which alert readers will remember was The Memory Wood, last mentioned when I was part way through. I struggled to the end but took the decision not to attend the discussion last Saturday, as the subject matter became more and more unbearable for me. Decades ago I was at school with a girl called Lucy Partington, who disappeared without trace from the town where I lived during her final year at University, only to turn up a  very long time later buried in the cellar of Fred and Rosemary West. In those circumstances books about the kidnap and torture of teenage girls and young women do nothing but distress me and I honestly could not have discussed this book as though it were an entertaining read. When the summary of the discussion came through I marvelled at the opening line which said that the group had fallen into two distinct camps. Surely, I thought, no-one had liked the book? Turns out the two camps were those who, like me, had fought their way from cover to cover, and those who hadn't been able to face that and so had skim read it to catch the salient points of the plot. I honestly cannot imagine why anyone would find this a worthwhile or fulfilling or enjoyable read, but presumably the publisher thought there was a market for it. 

Today, I have decided, is officially the start of the Countdown to Christmas, which basically means I'm going to do one thing every day to get me towards getting everything needful done by 24th. I sort of started this yesterday by buying the OH a chocolate Advent Calendar, although I feel this doesn't really count as it entailed no effort on my part bar asking the shopkeeper to pass me one, and then getting out my wallet to pay for it. Today however I am going to wrap my nephew's Christmas presents, which will stretch me slightly more and therefore feel more like a  meaningful task completed once it's done. 

Can I tempt you to read this book ...

I've been making a start today on a good old tidy of my study and I came across a sheet of paper on which I had photocopied a page of James Meek's To Calais in Ordinary Time. I'd meant to review it when I read it, but life must have got a bit busy, or other subjects presented themselves, and it fell by the wayside apart from a passing mention of how awful I found it. 

To demonstrate its unique qualities I had photocopied this page before returning the book to the library so that I could quote from it. Here you go 

Ces ne gave no thanks, and her neb ne tokened no feeling of blitheness that she was free. She kept a hard stern cheer, and her gaze wouldn't meet Will's. It was like to she hated him'. 

390 pages all written like that. It was hard going. I might have found it worth while struggling my way through it had any of the characters in it been at all likeable but this was yet another example of a book peopled by the violent, the misogynistic and the plain and simple unpleasant. I did not want to spend time with these people and if I had to I certainly didn't want to be struggling through almost 400 pages of weird syntax and odd vocabulary to do it. 

As the title suggests the book centres on a group of people making their way to Calais from the Cotswolds. I was rather startled to realise that almost at the end of the book they hadn't even reached Bristol where they were gong to get on a ship for France. I felt like I had travelled with them to the end of the world by that stage.

It's set at the time of the Black Death, and I gave a small cheer every time one of the group succumbed to the disease. I was cheering quite a lot towards the end - although not enough, as the three most irritating characters of all were sadly still alive on page 390. 

I'm not going to deny that it's a very clever book, written by a man who is himself clever, although possibly not quite as clever as he considers himself. It is apparently about identity and gender and language and constructing the world and I'm sure it is about all these things and many more, and scholars will, in the years to come, have a field day writing about the book, its themes, its structure, its meaning etc etc. Which presumably will delight Meek, or his shade, because if ever a book was written in order to be written about, rather than read and enjoyed, this is it. 

And now I can throw away that photocopied sheet, and think about which bit of the study I will tidy tomorrow. 

100 Books to Read Poster 22

 

This was Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle. I have no idea how it is that I have never read this before as I must have known of its existence for 50 years or more. Somehow it never came my way. 

In a way I wish I had read it when I was in my late teens as she captures so accurately all the difficult emotions and thought processes of that age, but there again perhaps that would have led me to wallow, rather than reminisce. And I wouldn't have appreciated how well she writes about girls of that age had I still been one, because that would have seemed as natural to me as breathing and nothing that took any writerly skill. But f course it takes a good deal.

The book was funny and touching and charming by turns, with - good heavens! likeable people. Some of them, it is true, behave in less than likeable ways some of the time, but it's behaviour that is understandable within the terms of their characters and situations. And surprisingly, for a book first written in 1949 and set in the period before World War 2 it has dated very little. 

Definitely a hit for me. 

Well, that was unexpected

Getting up in the early hours of Friday morning to visit the bathroom I thought 'Gosh the house seems very cold!' This proved to be because the front door had blown wide open. A large swathe of the sunroom floor was very damp and two discombobulated cats were wandering in and out, damp and puzzled. Further investigation revealed that the door between the living room and the kitchen had blown shut and that there was moreover a large pool of cat sick on the kitchen floor. Additionally the smart meter was showing red almost off the scale as the underfloor heating in the sunroom attempted to heat the whole island through the open door. 

This is not the sort of thing you want to discover at 4.00 a.m. 

I closed and locked the front door, I said a few soothing words to the confused cats and  opened the door to the kitchen so that they could access their food and water. I then dried my feet and went to bed, giving a full report to the OH. After about 30 minutes he dragged himself out of bed and dealt with the cat sick and come back to bed, noting that the underfloor heating had dried the sunroom floor very nicely and that the smart meter had returned to green. He was a bit worried that the cold shock would have damaged the coffee plant, but it seems to be surviving OK, so fingers crossed for that. 

The winds here have not stropped since Friday evening so we're now being very careful about locking rather than just closing the front door when we go to bed. As Sean Bean, in his iteration as Eddard Stark, would doubtless say 'Winter is Coming'. (And that's assuming it isn't already here)

A Day for Finishing Things

That's what yesterday was. 

I finished a pair of socks. This was the third of the five pairs I'm wanting to do before Christmas, and the first skein knitted up from the wool I bought in Pittenweem in September. These are for me. And although they're  a bit more colourful than I usually go for I like them. 

I also (finally finally) finished what has been my 'current' jigsaw puzzle for absolutely ages. I cannot imagine, looking at it, why I ever thought it was a good idea to buy it. Not only are there multiple images of the same thing on there but the pieces do not all interlock, a large number of them simply adjoin with sloping edges, which is an absolute nightmare. This one was finished yesterday evening, re-boxed this morning and is already in the library/charity shop pile. Later this afternoon I shall look out a puzzle that I know I will enjoy doing, I feel  deserve it, after fighting my way through this one.

The day was sadly rather too short to allow me to finish the latest Saturday Slaughters book from the library crime readers group. This is sad, because I would dearly have liked to have it finished and out of the house. It's  The Memory Wood by Sam Lloyd, and if you enjoy stories about young teenage girls being kidnapped and tortured it will be right up your street. Otherwise I would suggest you leave it alone. 

100 Books to Read Poster NO 21

 

And this was My Man Jeeves by P G Wodehouse. I know lots of people who find Wodehouse hysterically funny. I never have. However this was on the poster so I got a chance to see if, in the decades since I last read anything of his, my taste in that direction had changed. It had not. 

This is a book of short stories and I think is the one in which Jeeves and Wooster were first introduced. There are also a couple of stories about another Wooster type, although one who likes golf,  called Reggie something. Possibly Pepper. 

I still don't find these clever, except in a very mechanistic, Whitehall farce kind of a way. I still don't find them funny ether. What I do find is that, under a false cloak of 'how-dim-are-men?' they are deeply deeply misogynistic, and that leaves a very unpleasant taste.  

I might have left this as  neither a hit nor a miss, on the grounds that of its type its quite good, its just not my type of thing. But the misogyny I'm afraid takes it a very very long way  into Miss territory. 

Baking Subscription October

 

Blueberry and Lemon Biscotti. I've never made biscotti before, largely because I had no idea how to do it but  also because I'm not their greatest fan. 

I have to say these were a great success. There was quite a lot of hanging about the kitchen/oven, waiting for them to bake, and then cool, and then crisp up on both sides but it was worth it. They came out just right; light and crisp and crunchy.

I left out the supplied poppy seeds because, since  neither the OH nor I like them  it seemed silly to include them. There was also some icing sugar because you were supposed to ice the biscotti. I don't recall ever seeing an iced biscotto, not that that means much because I don't go round looking at them, but anyway we decided that we didn't need the extra sugar hit involved so they are icing-less. 

I would make these again, and I might even flirt with variations - apricot and almond? cranberry and chocolate chip? we'll see. 

100 Books to Read Poster No. 20

 Hurray! one fifth of the way through. It has to be said that I am getting through the books more quickly since a) the Ph D got finished and b) lockdown. 

Once again the graphic, in so far as it is supposed to relate to the title of the book,  rather defeats me. I mean you look at that picture and start trying to think of a famous-ish book called 'Message in a Bottle' don't you? 

But it is Bill Bryson's Notes from a Small Island, a description of a round (parts of ) the UK trip which he took just before he and his family decamped to live for several years is the US. 

Where to start? I listened to this rather than read it, because it and another poster title appeared in an Audible two for one sale just as my monthly credit dropped in in September. I left a rather snotty review of it on Audible, mostly relating to the shortcomings of the narrator who seems to think that people from all the Celtic nations of the British Isles speak in a fey tone with a generic accent hovering somewhere in the middle of the Irish Sea. This is very far from being the truth. Why do we even need to still be saying this in 2020? 

This was not however my only gripe. Time was when I devoured any new book by Bill Bryson, since I was sure that I would learn a lot and laugh a lot at the same time. In later years I have stopped buying his books or watching him on TV because I thought he had turned into a Miserable Old Git. But listening to this I discover I was wrong. Bryson has always been a Miserable Old Git and previously I either did not recognise this as the fact that it is, or I cared less than I do now. 

Honestly, does he ever stop moaning? He can moan about anything; people, accents, trains, roads, hotels, the weather, shops, modern life in general, you name it, Bryson has moaned about it.  

In view of the above, and given that if I want moans I can do my own, no-one is going to be surprised to learn that I have designated this a miss. 

What is it about cowls?

The OH doesn't think much of cowls. I don't know what he's got against them, I've certainly never ventured to make him one to wear so it's not the result of an unhappy experience. Maybe he just thinks they're a weak non-manly excuse for a scarf. 

I on the other hand love them. And while I'll admit that part of the reason is that they're fairly quick to knit and a good use for one ball of rather nice yarn in a weight unsuitable for socks, there's more to it than that. 

I'm not good with scarves. I'm OK with the woolly ones you wrap yourself in when the weather is cold but drapey, accessory type scarves I just can't get away with. It's a bit like flower arranging, some people drop a few flowers in a jug and its art. I drop a few flowers in a jug and they just look wrong. Too few. Too many. Too unbalanced. And it's the same with scarves. Some people can 'do' them. Some people ie me, can't. And this is where the cowl comes in. 

Cowls come in all sorts of sizes. There are the wider ones that fill in the gap at the top of a v-necked  jacket or coat. Also useful for pulling up and protecting ears if it turns chilly. I even have one that did duty as a hat one cold evening in Stockholm! There are narrower ones which basically hug your neck and instantly take away the severity of a dark or round necked top (when you're my age round necked tops tend not to be a good look.)And there are longer ones that are basically loops and they look like an artistically draped scarf All i all they're a really versatile little accessory. 

Which has of course all been leading up to a picture of my latest cowl, finished just before the pink and grey socks. 

Well, that was quick ....

Remember that I said I had cast on a sock during the men's French Open Final? I finished them yesterday. And this despite doing all the usual things that I  do during the day, plus starting the reading for a new course I am doing in the New Year and going out to the hairdressers yesterday afternoon. (And thank goodness I did because who knows what will be happening to hairdressers once the First Minister has made her most recent announcements this afternoon? We don't want the hair gong back to the state it was in after lockdown!) In a spirit of optimism however I made appointments for the OH to have is hair cut next week, and for my own pre-Christmas hair-do at the beginning of December. 

Meanwhile back to the socks. This is the second ball of the Pairfect yarn my sister bought for my birthday., and these ones are deffo for me. The pink is very bright, but the grey balances it out and anyway, what's wrong with a little neon pink? 

A picture? But of course. 

Ma foi! ....

.... and other exclamations registering half amusement and  half exasperation. 

It was wet yesterday afternoon so our plans for a walk went out of the window. That being  so I decided to do something I haven't done for years, which was to sit down and just watch a tennis match. I used to do that when I was student age, but somehow over the years it began to seem a waste of time, and although I have made resolutions sometimes recently to watch Wimbledon from the beginning through to the end, I never have. Time to waste however seems to be something many of us have in spades right now, so I settled down to watch the French Open men's single final. 

[When I say 'just watch a tennis match', after about 20 minutes I did look out a needle and some wool and cast on a plain sock. Because there is a lot of time in between points and between games and they spend a lot of time replaying the previous point and it's amazing how much  of a plain sock you can knit during this dead time]

When I started watching I thought I was indifferent to who won. In so far as I have followed the men's game over the past decade it's been a case of a) Murray playing - want him to win. b) Federer playing - want him to lose. c) anyone else playing - not bothered. However I realised quite early on in this match from my reactions to the play that I actually did want Nadal to win. And he did, so that was alright. In fact he won really easily but there was some great tennis along the way, so that was fine. 

If the playing was good the same cannot be said of the commentary. So irritating was it that I wonder if it was the inanities of commentating, rather than feeling I had better things to do with my time that led me to stop watching tennis in the first place. I certainly spent a fair bit of my time arguing with the commentators and correcting the stupid stuff they said. I know there's no point, they can't hear me, but it's just instinctive. And it made me feel better. 

Some of my 'favourites' were 'Djokovic is made of rubber'. Er- no. 'That game was a pivot point in this match' said when Djokovic finally won a game after losing six in a row. He then went on to lose the next four. Some pivot, eh? And 'that shot is a classic. Like Catcher in the Rye, that's a classic  - that's lasted for an eternity'. I don't know quite where to start on that one, but I'll just point out that Catcher in the Rye was published in 1951. I don't think seventy years quite counts as 'an eternity' - unless you have been forced to sit and listen to tennis commentary all that time, in which case it might well qualify. 

 

100 Books to Read Poster No 19

 

In the words of a once much loved and now disgraced children's entertainer 'Kin you giss what it is yit?' Absolutely no prizes for realising that it's Pride and Prejudice. And of course I have read it before multiple times,  but the poster gave me a good excuse, if one were needed, to read it again. Austen famously once said that it was 'too light and bright and sparkling', but after the downers that were Dissolution and The Secret History it struck me that light and bright and sparkling was exactly what I needed. 

I treated myself to Penguin's new clothbound edition before reading. I have a set of Austen's completed novels which were bought for me by my parents for a birthday many years ago, and I'll never get rid of them but the texts were not prepared with any academic rigour. The new Penguin edition is based on the definitive R W Chapman text, and although there was nothing new germane to the plot I did glean a few things that I hadn't known before. There is for example quite a more detailed description of Pemberley than I'd previously met with - especially the grounds - and I also discovered that the Bennets had a butler. Who knew? Well, anyone who had previously read the Chapman text obviously, but I hadn't. (And I don't remember a butler in any of the recent adaptations that I've seen either., so perhaps their writers had not gone back to the original text.) It might seem a small thing, but actually it immediately elevated the Bennets into a section of society I hadn't previously thought they belonged to. A whole new perspective on all sorts of things. 

The other novels in this edition will naturally go onto my Amazon wishlist, and meanwhile Pride and Prejudice was, of course, a hit. 

A Perfect Pair (of socks)

 

So this is magic. You buy a ball of yarn, follow the instructions on where to start both your socks and no matter what size you are knitting(allegedly) they turn out to be a perfectly matching patterned pair.

My sister discovered this yarn line a wee wile ago and did some very pretty striped socks in it, so when it was my birthday I asked her to buy me some as a present. I'm still rather surprised that it works, but I do have a second ball she bought me so I can try it all over again. 

Finishing off Fife

Time to round up our last day away. We went to a place called Brooksbank Walled Garden; we'd never heard of it before but there were several leaflets for it in the cottage we rented and we're suckers for a walled garden. In fact it's not just the walled garden, they have  a rockery and a woodland walk and also a national collection of narcissi; not that the narcissi were in evidence in August. It must be a great place to go in the spring though.

That said, even though there weren't many flowers about and they had had to put in various restrictions due to corona virus, we had a really lovely time there. The weather was glorious and so we had our second al fresco lunch in a row, and I bought some jam and some chutney that they make on the estate. And I took a shed load of pictures. 

That's a fairly random selection, but it gives an idea. It was a lovely day, in fact looking back it was a very nice week. Which is as well since it seems likely to be our last holiday for a while. 

Baking Subscription September

This was nutty millionaires shortbread and it was nice. It was nutty times two really as there was ground almond in the biscuit base and chopped pecans in the toffee. While I liked the ground almond in the base I wasn't too fussed about the pecans, and I'd rather have had milk chocolate on the top than plain. That  said the base was lovely and crisp and I'd use the recipe again, but leave out the pecans, put less salt in the biscuit and use milk chocolate on the top. Still, it was definitely a hit. 

100 Books to Read Poster No 18

 

Dissolution by C J Sansom. I've read this before, more or less when it first came out, and I must have enjoyed it because I went on to read the next four or five in the series before I got fed up with how formulaic the books were and stopped. From friends who carried on reading them I gather there was recently a very bad one that read as though it had been phoned in, followed by a return to form. I have to say that after re-reading, or rather listening to this, I feel no urge to get up to date with the series again. 

Apart from being very long it's also very bleak. I a understand that the time period and the subject matter sort of make those a given; there wasn't much to laugh about in Henry V111's England, especially if you were a monk.  It was overall a very very sad book and the ending in particular was heart breaking. Not the loss of the two young characters who get lost in the marsh, good riddance to them both as far as I was concerned; but the melancholy scenes in the Epilogue where the narrator re-visits the monastery where he carried out the murder investigation which is the subject of the book,  and details the destruction of first the community and then the fabric of the place. I hold no particular brief for the monastic life, but the greed of those who used religious reform as a way of enriching themselves at the expense of anyone weaker, or less morally flexible,  hardly makes for an edifying spectacle. Very true to life, of course, we only have to look at those who have  money or power or both in our own times to realise that it was ever thus and will presumably go on being for ever thus until humanity becomes extinct, but it's not a happy thought. And rally, just at the moment I coud have done with something a bit more uplifting.

That said I'll mark it as a hit rather than a miss because although I would never read it again, it's not a bad book in itself. 

Today is A Red Letter Day!

I wanted to write the title as Today is A day and see if people 'got it', but for some reason Blogger just didn't want to give me a way to do one single character in a different colour in a post title, so that was a funny idea gone to waste...

It's a red letter day because a man has just been and delivered a new washing machine, replacing the one that died just as we got back from our trip to Fife. I have mixed feeling about the dead machine. I cannot say it has not paid for itself because it has lasted a long time, and certainly longer than the dryer and the dishwasher which we installed at the same time and both of which have already been replaced. It didn't owe me anything. On the other hand we tried to get it repaired, much as we tried to get the dishwasher repaired when the original one gave up the ghost and with exactly the same result, we ended up having to get a new one. So much for trying to help the environment.

At least with the dishwasher we managed to get someone to come out and look at it and tell us that a repair was possible but not advisable. With the washing machine we thought we had booked someone to come and look at it - we had to go through the manufacturer's website where they took our post code, and a large amount of money, and then let us access a diary in which we could book a slot for a local engineer to come and visit. The engineer never turned up (which was actually no surprise to me as I had never believed for a minute that he even existed, let alone that he would pitch up at the front door) and when we queried this with the company they told us first that 'the repair hadn't been allocated, they would do that now' and then when we heard nothing from them and prodded them further they finally confessed that they had no engineers 'in our area (quelle surprise!) and after a couple of days they refunded our money. 

In the middle of all that we gave in to the inevitable and ordered a new washing machine which has been installed this morning. The man who installed it left about 15 minutes ago and I am already into the first of what will be many loads of laundry today. It is perhaps unfortunate then that last Friday a man did actually come when booked to install a smart meter which  is already exerting an unhealthy fascination over the OH. By the time the washing and drying is up to date he'll be having an apoplexy. But do I care? No. Because I need to wash. 

While I am, quite evidently,  much more excited about a new kitchen appliance that I really should be, I will refrain from taking and posting a photograph of it. 

Inverness and Back - With a Small Diversion

So it was up at the crack of dawn on Sunday for the early morning ferry. I don't usually know why we catch this one because it disagrees with me big time and I always suffer for hours afterwards, but on this occasion we had to be in Inverness for 4.30 and we had built a meeting with a friend on the way into the schedule. Sadly the meeting had to be called off at the last minute but the ferry was booked so  there we were, in no choice land.  

The reason for the trip was LVE OPERA! for the first time sine January. OK it was two singers, two string players and a narrator on the back of a truck in the theatre car park with a cut down version of Don Giovanni, but it was nevertheless real life singing and we needed some of that in our lives so we went to see it. 

Due to the aforementioned meeting cancellation we also managed to go to M & S and get the OH two new pairs of jeans. The Cat Lorenzo, nowhere near as agile as he was in his youth, now takes two jumps rather than one to get up on to the OH's desk and the intermediate step requires the use of claws in the OH's leg. He does not object to the small scabs and the pain, but it does make a mess of his trousers. The hope is that denim will be rather more resistant to cat claws than wool is. 

Anyway, here is the truck, before the performance started

and here it is again with personnel! The photos are rubbish because the truck had been parked with its back to the sun - great for the performers, not so good for the audience, or indeed for taking photos. 

They are  just to remind myself we went really. It was sooooo good to hear the human voice singing Mozart again, and I'm aware of how pretentious that sounds, but facts is facts and we had missed it. 

So yesterday, booked as we were  on the lunchtime  ferry to get back we had loads of time and I suggested a short detour to a small town called Portmahonack. We are always saying 'We must go' when we pass the sign for the turn off from the A9 and yesterday was the day we finally went. 

I was curious about it as it was for  long time, and for all I know still is, the home of the crime writer Anne Perry and I had often wondered what on earth made a very successful writer like her bury herself in the back of beyond. I had envisaged it as a small village, maybe five cottages and a post box, in the middle of a swathe of Forestry Commission pine, but in fact I couldn't have been more wrong. It's a sizeable village on the Moray Firth with a beautiful blue flag beach. And, improbably, an Italian Restaurant. 

We took a short walk to and on the beach 

and promised ourselves that we would come back another day when we had more time. 

In the event, a road closure and a very slow drive up the A9 courtesy of two baler lorries, a camper van and a driver in a small car unwilling to try to overtake any of them meant that we only just made it to the ferry check in, and I was so exhausted by all the excitement I took to my bed and slept for three hours. Felt better when I woke up though.