First Fruits

So I made the first cake from the baking subscription.

Banana and cashew loaf.

I haven't had very much of it myself, although I did sample it. I'm not a big fan of banana flavoured stuff, and the topping is very sweet; toffee sauce with added fudge chunks. But it was definitely edible. The rest of the family pronounced it scrumptious and yummy, so I think we can call it a success. 

Waiting now with interest to see what the next one is. 

Who'd have thunk it?

It appears that, despite previous years evidence to the contrary, the OH can actually recognise the occasional hint about Christmas presents. To wit, my biggest box yesterday contained this:-

It's the first instalment of a 12 month baking subscription. Every month you get a box with a recipe card, and pre-weighed dry ingredients, and any little odd bits you might need, like decorations. I had no idea such things existed until our friend K mentioned a few months ago that she had bought  one as a present for her aunt and I was so taken with the idea I started mentioning it now and again in conversation, saying what a good idea I thought it was. Quite a lot. I thought that as usual these hints had fallen on stony ground, but they hadn't. 

Not included in the subscription, but added by the OH as an optional extra - a set of all the baking tins you'll need for this years baking. Woe betide anyone who uses them for anything else. 

I was absolutely thrilled with this present. And as tomorrow is the OH's birthday I shall make the first cake then. It's a banana and cashew loaf and I thought I might need to wait a while to do it as we have no bananas, (yes, cue earworm, sadly) but on a trip out this morning in a vain search in the only shop open for miles around to get some cat litter we found some bananas that were definitely going soft, as required by the recipe. So we snatched them up. And no, we don't generally have cashews either, but they came in the box! Stand y for photos. 

Happy Christmas

It's almost here. 

Now if you'll excuse me I've got one last present to wrap and two stockings to fill. 

Wherever you are and whoever you're with I wish you a very merry Christmas. 

Bunted!

I have been silent for a while , partly because I was having my traditional pre-Christmas meltdown, partly because I was struggling with the horror that is The Glasgow Lergy and partly because I have been busy knitting up the Ultimate Festive Bunting. And lo! due to my strenuous efforts the UFB is now complete and hanging up and here are some photos of it.

early days

almost there 

done 

and done 

and hanging up. 

I am actually very pleased with how it turned out, except for the fact that the cast off edge curls over, thereby hiding the 233 s*dd*ng tiny beads I placed along the tie with a  crochet hook so small it was practically invisible to the naked eye, so rather negating the effort and intended effect. Next year I'll soak it and pin it out and hope that that will solve the problem; there really wasn't time to do that this year. 

It is perhaps the most uncharacteristic thing I have ever knitted but I'm really quite proud of it. It was fiddly and I had to learn a couple of new things for it but it was well worth it

There hasn't been much knitting on the blog recently, not because I haven't been doing any but because it was all for other people, for Christmas,  and some of them or their relations do read this occasionally. So there'll be  a bumper knitting post after Christmas.

Meanwhile, for the past couple of days I have been totally convinced it was Christmas Eve, and even now it's still two days away. As my cards are all done and my local presents delivered and the OH has twice in the last three days braved the horror that is Tescos in the run up to Christmas to get the food, I think I can now relax. I am told this will give the lergy time to run riot, and its course, thereby ensuring that I am fighting fit for Christmas. I remain to be convinced but it's worth a try. 

Glasgow - The Other Bits

Well as it happens there weren't many other bits, apart for the Scottish Opera stuff.

Managed to go with Son No 2 to meet BH, the one time Scottish Opera Costume Trainee who we met about this time last year. Her time with SO having come to an end she managed to get a job with Scottish Ballet and is looking forward to touring with them to South Korea and China next year. Meanwhile she just managed to squeeze in a quick drink with us literally before catching the train to Edinburgh where SB are doing Nutcracker for three weeks. She was loving her new job which was good to hear. 

Should have been meeting up with my Ravelry friend A at The Yarn Cake on Tuesday but she cancelled on me because she wasn't well. This turned out to be a lucky thing because I wasn't feeling too clever myself by Tuesday and by Wednesday I was totally knocked out by some horrid bug. This meant cancelling a meeting with two friends in Stirling, which, given the weather, again wasn't a wholly bad thing, but disappointing. 

The OH,having finished all his admin stuff early actually came back a day earlier than planned, but being ill I have no idea of what he did with the extra day. I know we did the Emerging Artist thing on Friday, and also squeezed in a trip to Pandora and John Lewis as well. Saturday was earmarked for IKEA , M&S and Hotel Chocolat, but IKEA sadly fell by the wayside. We were in M & S mainly to refresh parts of Son No 2's wardrobe which had passed under the bleary eye of his sick mother and been found wanting in several departments earlier in the week, but I also binge bought some stuff for myself which is a habit when I go south. Having commented in a less than positive fashion about the number of black t-shirts owned by son no 2 , I perhaps shouldn't have bought five things which were all either black, white or a mixture of the two. What can I say, I was shopping for basics! 

And for anyone who might be wondering - this is how the bunting is coming along ...

although I am a bit further along than that might suggest as I have started knitting them into the tie. And yes, that  would be the tie the instructions for which begin Cast on 521 stitches!

Bedside Books Number 3

I first encountered Clive James as the TV critic of The Observer, back in the early 1970s. I loved the fact that he wrote so wittily and well about television, and took it as  seriously as other people took books and films. Somewhere in the house (for which read probably stashed away in the loft) we have copies of the three volumes of his collected columns from 1972-82. You would think that collections of TV criticism would date and I suppose in a way they did, but for me and others of my generation that didn't matter because they were a warm reminder of some of the amazing, and amazingly awful, TV that we watched.  

James eventually left The Observer and went on to other things; writing poetry, making TV documentaries and becoming a general cultural critic, but he obviously never lost his love for TV as this book attests. It concerns the phenomenon of the Box Set; the binge watching of which he freely admits to during his current illness, and he has plenty of things to say about it, both as a form in general and  why there is an audience for it, and about the things such series tell us about the society we live in, or the one that  we gaze upon from across the pond.  All the big blockbusters are here from The Sopranos to Game of Thrones, taking in on the way Breaking Bad, The West Wing,  The Wire and many others. Some I have watched, some I haven't, but I have enjoyed reading James' comments on them all. 

He's still witty and he's still perceptive. No-one else for me has summed up so precisely the basis on which the world of Game of Thrones works, but it is,  as James says 'a world in which the law has not yet formed'. A brilliant précis. 

The book is full of such pithy insights and is a totally entertaining read. It may be that this will be James' last book, and if so how fitting that his fial work should take him back to praise and critique the medium he has, all his life, done so much to champion. 

I might add that one of his throw away lines in a review decades ago about how eastern European contestants were preparing themselves to enter for Miss World now that they were able to do so, became a precept which I try to abide by, -  not always successfully, but I make the effort. 'People are not to be despised' said James,'simply because their dreams are cheap'. Just so.  

Music Maestro Please!

So I just had rather a odd week in Glasgow while the OH went off to Devon, but it was nicely book-ended with a couple of Scottish Opera events. We always think we'll never get to winter SO events, and I am personally convinced that we never leave the islands between 1st December and 31st March but the  Facebook memories app tells me I'm quite wrong about that! In fact we seem to be away for the second weekend in December more often that not!

Anyway, we went down a day earlier than needed for the OH's trip to Devon so that we could go to the SO concert performance of Prokofiev's The Fiery Angel. This almost always has the epithet 'rarely performed' attached to it and I always think that when things are rarely performed it's for a pretty good reason, and the reason is usually that it's not very good and no-one wants to see it. Not necessarily the case with The Fiery Angel though, possibly it just takes too much resource to get into production.

Pluses first. The music was wonderful We had expected some long dissonant modern score but it was hugely accessible and even melodic most of the time. The concert came as a joint production between SO, the Scottish Conservatoire plus a few soloists brought in especially. The soloists were generally very good indeed. The Inquisitor was below par, but happily it's a short role. The soprano who sang the lead role of Renata, the deeply troubled girl who sees visions of a fiery angel , was superb. I'm not qualified to comment on orchestral playing but it sounded fine to me - occasionally  a bit too loud for the singers but that possibly had something to do with the venue. 

Having said pluses first, that rather implies that there are minuses, but they're nitpicks really. A staged performance is just that but there's usually a bit of a nod to character in the way of costume. To this end I could see the thought behind putting the Doctor in turquoise scrubs but it was just a modern colourful touch too far, The girl who was singing the role of the medieval German Innkeeper was wearing 6 inch stilettos and a black frock that clung closely everywhere it touched - which was everywhere, except for the flame hem. It was a beautiful dress, and would that I had the figure for it; but as a nod to the dress habits of C15 women running a pub  by the Rhine it left a bit to be desired. Then there's  the 'plot', if it can be termed such. The libretto, also by Prokofiev, is based on an obscure book by an obscure Russian author; it is apparently a parody of Russian symbolism. Like the poetry of modernism, I suspect that Russian symbolism is easy to parody badly and very difficult to parody well. This does not strike me a particularly good parody, it's farcical. But, powerful and moving as well, in operatic form. 

On my second to last day, when the OH was safely returned from Devon, we had the pleasure of attending a recital given by the new cohort of  Scottish Opera's Emerging Artists. This was a very  enjoyable event with some splendid singing and much to my surprise I finally heard a song by Poulenc that I enjoyed. I have learned, over the years, and by dint of putting in a lot of effort,  a certain  appreciation of the 'art song' although those by French composers are generally still a closed book to me. After the recital, as supporters of the program, we were invited to lunch at the Theatre Royal to meet the young singers which was, as always, a pleasure and a privilege. They do anther recital in January and we're planning to go again, although in deference to the prospect of bad weather we'll probably fly down for that one. Looking forward to it anyway.