Budgerigar Socks!

So here's the first product of the wool purchasing that I did in May. They're called budgerigar socks because the colours made me think of pet budgies; blue and yellow and fawn and black. 

Incidentally it was far far too hot for me to wear my carefully curated viva outfit, but the sweatshirt has seem sterling service since I got back to Orkney. I had to panic buy something else to wear which wouldn't make me sweat buckets and managed to find a plain shirt in a colour I believe is known as 'greige'. I quite liked it and it was comfortable to wear but still rather disappointed I couldn't have worn my outfit of choice.

This is a Short One

I passed!

In the event the viva  was quite enjoyable. I wish I'd known beforehand there wasn't going to be any questioning along the lines of  'On page 124 you say xyz, would you care to expand upon that a bit?' because that was my biggest fear and I could have saved myself a lot of worry had I known there wouldn't be any of it. Plenty of other questions, it took about two hours all told, but apart from some minor corrections, it's all done and dusted. 

It really hasn't sunk in yet but - just call me Doctor! 

A (Temporary) Silence is About to Fall

So I'm on the midnight boat tonight to Aberdeen, training onwards to Glasgow tomorrow and then off to Yorkshire on Friday where I will be until Monday at the Gaskell Society Conference. Back to Glasgow on Monday and then travelling north again to Inverness on Thursday ready for my viva on Friday. Then we'll be coming back to Orkney the day after.

Packing for that lot was a pain.

I will only have my tablet with me and as I have never really got my head round doing the blog on anything other than the laptop there will be no more posts before Sunday 28th  There may not be one then, but there certainly won't be one before that. This will not mean that I have thrown myself in the River Ness in a mood of black despair (although I suppose that probably can't be ruled out totally), just that the logistics mean I can't post. 

Once I'm back though I should have loads to post about. And pictures of Yorkshire. There can never be too many pictures of Yorkshire.

Seduced Again!

I made the mistake last week of looking in the window of the Craft Shop in Kirkwall. I'm usually safe, because they sell what some people refer to as 'commercial yarn', and although I've got nothing against that, quite the reverse in fact, I can resist it by reminding myself of all the special non-commercial yarn I have in my stash waiting to be knitted up. 

This time though there was a rather interesting new Batik yarn in the window; DK, in 200g balls and as I was looking for something to send to a friend I thought I'd pop in and see how much it was. I bought a ball for the friend - and  a different ball for me, because I just couldn't resist the colours. 

So that it didn't count as 'adding to the stash' I knitted it up straight away into a standard triangular garter stitch shawl with just a bit of an edging and I shall take it away with me when I go south tomorrow night. 

And here it is

I know, it looks like an envelope! But it's just a neatly folded shawl. And it was very calming to knit.

Baking Subscription July

With an irony that did not escape me this months bake was chocolate raspberry cake. Triple layers, sandwiched together with a chocolate filling and raspberry buttercream for which you had to make a raspberry syrup. I can't deny that it is a lovely cake and the sponge is light and delicious. But it's a bit on the big side when there are only two of you to eat it. I'm going away on Wednesday and I daresay it will keep the OH going for a few days after that. But it's the sort of cake I should be sharing with friends but I don't have time to do that just now; never mind 'after the viva' I will beable to have friends round, relax, chat and feed them with cake again! 

50th Birthday Bash

One of the lovely things about being a mature student is that you mix with all sorts of ages. One of my fellow Ph D cohort had a baby a few months ago, and another, as previously mentioned, was celebrating her 50th birthday last weekend.

The party was in Dornoch, where said friend now lives, in a gorgeously rambling two storey flat above the Dornoch Bookshop. There was a band (who got fired half way through the evening!), there was an 80s mix tape, there was multigenerational dancing ....

... and naturally there was cake. 

There was also a less hectic open house on Sunday morning where we actually had some time and quiet to catch up with the friend and some of her family before making for the north coast again.

We stayed overnight in Dornoch in a very posh B and B called The Steading. The OH had booked it. I leave booking stuff to him these days on the grounds that he tends to book places which I would discount as 'too expensive'. The Steading consists of several renovated farm buildings, all beautifully done to a very high standard. They had lost their chef the week before and could therefore only offer a continental breakfast, but since I only ever have continental that didn't bother me. I don't think it can have bothered anyone actually; it was the only place I've ever stayed that had both honey and an open whisky bottle beside the porridge pot!  

The room was quite luxurious ad we had our own little garden plot. And yes, there are pictures .... although not as many as I thought I had. Here's our little garden

                                                              that's the door to our room

and this is the dining room. I loathe the tendency of Scottish B and Bs to indulge in tartan carpeting, but the rest was quiet and tasteful - or should I say more to my taste.

On the way back as it was a lovely sunny day and we had hours and hours to fill we stopped at Golspie for a nose around. More on that, and pictures, anon. 

A Weekend Away ...

We dashed down to Dornoch over the weekend to celebrate a friend's 50th birthday. Description and photos tomorrow, because I'm too tired just now, and if it wasn't for the fact that I'm charging my Fitbit Inspire via the laptop I'd have gone to bed ages ago.

Meanwhile here are some pictures of yet another cake I made recently

This came from the same book as the summer fruit sponge with the buttermilk and keen eyed observers will note once again the lack of faff in the decorating. Sprinkled with icing sugar, overlaid with a bit of sprinkled cocoa and really all it needed, as it was very rich. You started off melting butter and raspberry conserve in a pan and  then chucked in the rest of the ingredients before baking in the oven. 

Next up in this book is a baked chocolate mousse cake which is even gluten free, but I doubt that will be seeing the light of day before August. I'm off next Wednesday for about ten days, so it will have to wait until I get back. However the July baking subscription box is on its way so I might stir myself to do that. The April box alas! still languishes untouched in the kitchen.

More viva prep - of a sort

This is more to do with what I'm going to wear than anything else, which is basically the only thing that is, so far, properly prepared. I need to feel comfortable and I need to feel that whatever I'm wearing suits me, so with this in mind I was delighted to see that Seasalt, my current fave mail order clothing company had one of their very comfortable but stylish sweatshirt tunics in the sale, in my size, and in one of my 'best colours'. They call it Dark Satsuma, but I just call it orange.

When it came I decided that it needed a little something to take away the plainness of the front so I dived into my wool stash, had a brief but focussed search in the Ravelry pattern database and whipped up this little loop.

It's very satisfying to find a use for a pretty yarn in your stash that previously you've despaired of ever being able to use for want of a suitable pattern. 

I then treated myself to a relatively cheap but effective cuff in appropriate colours which may also serve as a timely reminder on the day that the world is mad, incorporating as it does various covers that have been used on Alice in Wonderland, and therefore not to take things too much to heart. 

I think with a pair of grey trousers I will look smart but not overly so, and feel comfortable. I rather regret not having a pair of fire opal ear-rings to go with it all, but I daresay I will find something almost as good in my jewellery box.

In another part of the viva prep forest I have now managed, despite the bad behaviour of the printer, to completely print the whole thing, and have proof read rather more than half. So progress is steady, if a trifle slower than I would like.

And now I must go and dry a very very very wet and vocal cat!

Dig Widow

It's that time of year again, when the covers come off the archaeological dig at the Ness of Brodgar and the OH disappears all day to go and scrape at stuff with a trowel or draw trench plans with a 3H pencil. He's away by 8, not back until 'the back of 6' as we say here, and I am left 'abandoned and alone' or 'in peace and quiet' (depending how I want to spin it) for eight weeks.

To be fair he has not actually done the dig every year, and last year he did only two weeks. It does have to be worked around earning a living and 8 weeks off the 'day job' isn't always convenient or possible. But he enjoys it so I am happy for him to do it. The dig diary for this year is here, and the OH even features in one of the photos of Day One. 

(We went to the annual pre-dig lecture about ten days ago and although I was not particularly looking forward to it I enjoyed it very much as, rather than a rehash of what we've heard before, it was all about the new scientific developments that are being used in archaeology these days. And absolutely fascinating.)

And in fact this year it works well that he is out  as I am enmeshed in preparation for my viva. This is somewhat surprising. I had intended just to read through the thesis text a couple of times the week before but I was rather horrified to see a photo on Facebook from a  friend who was about to be viva-ed in which she showed her thesis absolutely full of colour coded highlighter strips. 'Golly' I  thought, 'that looks a bit serious, perhaps I ought to do a bit more than just a last minute re-read'. I am accordingly currently going through the text with a fine toothcomb looking for typos and careless mistakes, and finding far too many of them for my peace of mind. The downside is that I am mortified by them, but the  upside is that I am finding the text itself rather better than I thought I would. So that's this week's task, and once it's done I will stop. Next week I will start thinking about what questions I might be asked and how I might frame my replies. But chances are that on the day the examiners will throw me a loop by asking a question I could never have anticipated in a thousand years ...