Second Jab

So, the next time someone says to you ' I hear that you don't get a bad reaction to your second AZ jab' you might consider saying to them very politely that that hasn't been the experience of everyone you know.  I had my second one yesterday and if anything the effects were slightly worse. I didn't get the shivers, but I did get the aches, the low level headache and the fatigue. Oh boy did I get the fatigue. And the Very. Sore. Arm. 

This has left me feeling extremely sorry for myself which is sort of bad news given that I now need cheering up and tomorrow is the Virtual  Yorkshire Yarn Festival. 

Oh dear! 

Laydeez and Chentle-MEN, I give yew ....

 

the 2020 Debbie Abrahams Mystery Blanket, now complete. 

I finished this yesterday. For the past couple of weeks I have devoted my knitting time on two days of the week to working on this to get it finished. Mostly this meant sewing rather than knitting, which is why I've had to force myself to do it, sewing up not being at all my thing,  but yesterday I finished the final border and mitred the corners. 

A couple more close ups

Bits of it could definitely be described as a learning process. That central square being a casein point as doing it I learned that I don't like doing Japanese short rows. But honestly, although I could be a bit more pleased with it, it wouldn't be by much. It's not perfect, but it is lovely and I am just so chuffed that I persevered and got it finished. 

And next week I must get out the unfinished 2019 one and see what I can do with that....

Baking Subscription Catch Up - April

 

As noted in my previous baking post this was Viennese Whirls. What can I say? I don't like Viennese biscuits over much so these were always going to be too much of a faff for me to be a fan. That said I'm pleased to report that they certainly smelled and tasted like the real thing, and melted in the mouth like the real thing too. So they were a success to that extent.

As regards the filling(s), you had to make lemon curd and a white chocolate buttercream. My lemon curd didn't set which wasn't a good omen, and then when conferring with my sister she said that the chocolate buttercream wasn't really worth the bather. What to do? In the end since the curd wasn't useable as it was I made the buttercream but added some of the lemon ;sauce' so that there was a lemon taste to the biscuits. If you like Viennese biscuits these are very nice. If you don't like them much they are edible. I won't be doing them again but I was pleased they came out right. 

Incidentally what was left of the lemon curd definitely did set in the fridge overnight. 'Twas ever thus. 

Gotcha!

 It was a bit chill yesterday but we still went out for a walk. 

First we went over to Yesnaby ( WW2 Archaeology, spectacular cliffs, wildflowers and birds)

Then we went to Happy Valley which we have been promising ourselves a visit to at bluebell time for a few years now without ever getting around to it - busy in other directions and not always knowing when the bluebells were out. 

Driving from Yesnaby to Happy Valley takes you past Geri's Ice Cream Parlour (no it really does, there aren't that many roads on Orkney!) and mine was a double waffle cone with Orkney Fudge and Vanilla Honeycomb. The OH had lemon curd and mint choc chip. They are his favourite flavours, but I don;t know that they go all that well together. 

But the main reason for going to Yesnaby just now was to look for this:- 

Primula Scotica. Found only in Orkney and Caithness, tiny, flowers in May and July. Every Orcadian jeweller and artist you have ever heard of  features a primula scotica in one of their collections, with the honourable exception of Karen Duncan 

We've been here sixteen years now and we've never actually gone looking for it before, so I was very impressed that we found it first go. Although we did have  help from some passing tourists from south who had seen them first and told us roughly where we would find some. I'm not saying we wouldn't have found them ourselves but honestly it was a bit needle, haystack. Easier to find next time though, as the leaves are a dead giveaway, once you know what you're looking for. 

Glasgow

I feel I should blog about Glasgow before I forget all about it.  We had so many plans, many of which had to be abandoned because of needing to come back to Orkney early. 

However we did manage a trip to IKEA and M and S out at Braehead. We played a one all draw with the universe here as, after almost an hour in a stifling IKEA we manage to choose some new sofas only to discover that they were out of stock at the store and nly available mail order. By the time we got back to Orkney they were also unavailable by mail order as well, so we couldn't even order them and get them delivered to the flat for us to bring back another time. On the upside we did manage to get me a new floor lamp for use here so that I can see what I'm doing when I knit, the previous one was clinging to life by a thread, and the ew one looks nicer and it works well. I also got a new pair of jeans in M and S and I got 15% off because by a total coincidence the day before we left for Glasgow I got an M and S Sparks offers e-mail, and one of the offers  was for jeans. This had the side effect of making me work out how to use my Sparks card and associated offers, so that can only be a good thing.

I have no photos of the lamp or the outside of IKEA. Sorry.   On the other hand I do have a picture of the harbour at The Hope which I took to celebrate being able to leave it for the first tie in months. 

Friday we met up with our friend K, who we know through her work with Scottish Opera. She brought coffee and we brought cake and we had a lovey long if occasionally chilly chat in the garden. You can;t see the cake but there was tea loaf made by me, lime and coconut cake made by son no 2 and some M and S tubs of small chocolatey bits. 

After we left K we walked through some very nice bits of Glasgow ....

firstly to Waterstones and then to the Yarn Cake. Due to having taken part in a video focus group some while ago for research into public library provision in Scotland I had a Waterstones voucher to spend and I finally got Mantel's The Mirror and the LIght with it.  (Also a jigsaw puzzle but the Mantel took most of the voucher, it was a small one! The puzzle was just a bonus). 

Purchases at The Yarn Cake will doubtless feature in another post in due course. Along with some yarn related Happy Mail. 

On Saturday I had arranged to meet one of my Central Belt friends (the other one was recovering from  a cataract operation and preparing for the second one) in Stirling. We had lunch in The Smith Gallery, service was  bit slow as they were understaffed but I had a delicious ploughman's lunch (pic below. NO I didn't finish it all)  Afterwards we had a stroll around Stirling, window shopping in the jeweller's, dipping into a couple of charity shops and ending up in a book shop and cafe combined called The Book Nook. Recommended if you're ever in Stirling. It was a lovely day.

And then on Sunday of course we had to come back to Orkney. We took the scenic route through Perthshire as is now our habit and I persuaded the OH to stop so that I could take a picture of this lovely little loch. 

We also stopped as usual at the Highland Chocolatier shop in Grandtully, but we didn't buy anything, partly because I was feeling bad about the amount of cake, cheese, and other normally forbidden goodies I had eaten over the previous few days, and partly because his prices have shot up, and £10 suddenly seemed a lot of money for a packet of Turkish Delight where it would work out at about a pound a piece. Perhaps I'm just mean.  

And That's A Wrap

 

Remember the breaking? mothdamaged? silvery grey yarn that I was using on a  project that had been languishing unfinished for years? Well the project is now done and blocked and ready for wear.

This is the very simple lace pattern that frustrated me so much.

Honestly, how hard could it be? 

In some ways I made a basic error using this yarn for this pattern because the basic raison d'etre of the pattern is a technique which makes the holes in the lace very sharply defined, so using a fluffy yarn rather defeats the object. That said I love it now it's finished; it's warm and light and fluffy and I hope it's not too long before I get a chance to wear it. Crossing fingers for the projected outdoor Scottish Opera Falstaff in July. 

Baking Subscription May

 

Cinnamon muffins. The box arrived the day after we got back from Glasgow and I made them yesterday. They're surprisingly OK . Eagle eyed readers will note that I have deigned to put the icing in a piping bag and pipe a swirly pattern on the top. Eagle eyed readers who are also proficient cake decorators will doubtless also notice that I cut  the piping bag too high up so that the icing lines are too thick. Well, I'll do better next time. 

Meanwhile I should try and get around to April's box which I have put off as it is Viennese Biscuits. Even in a lemon incarnation I am not a fan. 

Third Time's A Charm

No I don't believe it's true either, it's just one of those mindless thigs people say, bu on the other hand it was the third time I tried to do this jigsaw and lo! it's finished.

It was part done before we went away. I bought a new puzzle in Glasgow and there was another waiting for me when I got back (Mother's Day present from Son No 1*) so this one needed done and off the table. 

*Canadian Mother's Day in case anyone is thinking it was strangely late. 

'It won't take you long to polish that one off' said the OH. 'It only has 500 pieces'. 

I fear he failed to factor in that, as can be seen, 300 of them are green. 

Anyway, it's done and I will soon be popping it back in its box and putting it on the library/charity shop pile. 

Yes, we've been away

and yes, we're back and  no, it shouldn't have been such a short trip away and no I'm not happy that we had to come back early. This was due to the differing tier levels of Orkney (now Tier 1, hip hip hooray) and Glasgow (remaining in Tier 3) from Monday. So here I am, back in Orkney instead of enjoying life in the big city for another few days. Sob, sob. 

We did see some friends and get in a little retail therapy and I finally saw my Christmas present from the OH even though we're not yet in a position to bring it back here. Sometime this year I'm sure. More details and a few photos to come.

Meanwhile, I had my nails done in anticipation of the big trip away. Like so much else in my life just now  I am very ambivalent about them. Nothing wrong with them per se, I was just so attached to the butterflies from last time. 

 

Let's Catch Up with the Happy Mail

There was yarn - naturally. 

This was the Giddy Knits Once Upon A Yarn Club for April, a sock set called Cinderella

This is a Vintage Lace tonal skein to go with the spring sorbet minis I posted a couple of weeks back. I have now found a replacement pattern  for he one that turned out not to be suitable so that's good.

Then there was this book which I bough for my Celtic Art project 

and this one which is the Laine Magazine 52 Weeks of Shawls which I bought mostly with my prize voucher from Great British Yarns. 

There were also some new bras, which I had to buy as a result of an unfortunate washing machine related incident a few weeks back, but I'm not posting up pictures of those. They're more your 'necessary' rather than your 'happy' mail. 

 

And another good book I read recently

or, listened to rather,  was by Ann Cleeves. It's a Vera Stanhope and I've mentioned before that I'm not a huge fan of that particular series. However  I was desperately casting round for something to get from the library's Borrowbox collection and this seemed the best bet. 

It was called The Darkest Evening and it was really enjoyable. Maybe that was because I hadn't read any others recently, or maybe I find them easier to get into, having seen some of the stories on TV which has given me a better handle on some of the recurring characters. I don't know. But I  enjoyed listening to it and it was very well read, even down to variations in the characters' Northumbrian accents by someone called Janine Birkett. I'd never heard of her, but she was excellent.

It starts with Vera on a snowy night coming across a baby in an abandoned car. She takes it to shelter at the nearest house ( a place she is familiar with from her own childhood) and while she's trying to sort out a search for its parent(s), its mother's murdered body is found nearby in the snow. 

What I particularly liked about this was that several times I thought 'It must be them wot dunnit' only to be distracted and made to think it wan't ... and then it was. It takes a clever writer to do that. 

If you like police procedurals, worth a read or a listen. 

Saturday Slaughters - A Positive Review at Last!

 

So this month we read Beloved Poison by E S Thomson. Turns out it was the first in a series, but it worked well as a stand alone. 

The book is set in 1850 and centres on a crumbling hospital which is about to be demolished to make way for a new railway, and on some of the people who work there. The discovery during the demolition  of six small coffins containing whittled wood babies and dry bouquets sets off an investigation which results in death, madness and mayhem, although to be honest there's quite  a lot of (concealed) madness to start with. It's very Gothic i tone, so for those who Gothic repels or upsets, don;t go near it. 

Everyone else,Id say give it a go. The research seems excellent, it's certainly fitted seamlessly into the  narrative and apart from a few moments of Grand Guignol it's a very realistic picture of London in the mid nineteenth century. The writing is excellent; cinematic, but also evoking the sounds, taste and smells of a Victorian city - all done without the author figuratively jumping up and down and saying Look! Look! I'm a brilliant writer. 

Some of the group thought it was slow to start, although I didn't think so, if anything if we're talking pace I thought the denouement was possibly a bit rapid, and there were small perhaps inconsistent plot points that could be explained away if you thought about them hard enough. I thought it was a splendid, if occasionally hard-to-take read, and I will probably pre-order the Kindle version of Book 2 which is due out in September. 

Some Really Wow! Socks

 

So this is one of the pieces of Happy Mail that I hadn't got around to showing yet. A skein of sock yarn from North Shire Yarns, called Gimli's Journey to Moria. Honestly ow could any Tolkien fan resist? It is even more beautiful in 'real life' than it looks on the website or in that photo.

It being mainly in shades of gray I unselfishly allocated it to the Son No 1 sock project and here are  the resulting May socks. 

So gorgeous. If he doesn't love them as much as we do, we'll have them back for the OH. Pattern is Hermione's Everyday Sock by Erica Lueder which I've used before and really like; it worked  really well with this colourway too. Clue for this month is Bowell.

I wanted to get them done early this month as his wife's birthday is on 15th and it seemed like a good idea to put these in the same box as her birthday presents. Postage charges are so high, it is as well to save money on them when you can. 

Some Recent Walks (2) Trig Points

There's a trig point on the island where we live and we'd been here about 12 years before I ever walked up to it and I didn't bather again for a long time. It's up quite a steep hill, which of course is no surprise, and it also can get very muddy so it's not a favourite despite some fantastic views over the sea, other islands and of course the Churchill Barriers from the top. 

We did do it about ten days ago though.

Later the same week we drove down to South Ronaldsay and did the walk up to the communications tower there. I've never got quite that far before, as it's further than it looks from the road, but this time I persevered and when we walked round the back of it lo and behold! a little further on there was another trig point. Obviously the week for them. I immediately got all enthusiastic, and suggested to the OH that we start looking for trig points on our Orkney maps and visiting them all, but the idea died a death when he pointed out that there is one near Kirkwall at the top of Wideford Hill. If I wanted to go mountaineering instead of walking up a hill I'd do it on something a bit more famous than Wideford Hill. But I took some photos of/at  the South Ron one, including the obligatory lambs and a clump of primroses. 

Some Recent Walks (1)

It having been the first of the month recently; what, again already? went up the cry - in this  house anyway - it was off to Firth Park for the regular first of the month shot. Which looked like this

Naturally I took some other pics while we were there as  things are blooming, or coming into bud, or leaf

                                                        and look! we found a little friend! 

It was however very cold so we cut off the projected part two of the trip, which was going to Geri's and came home via Tescos so we could do the supermarket shop. 

Bedside Books - Now We Are Nine

Yes, down to nine although this is not because I have read two of them. One of them has gone back to the shelves unread. A few months ago when I was reading The Silence of the Girls, by Pat Barker, and A Thousand Ships and everything else  Natalie Haynes has ever written I thought I would enjoy going back to the source material and reading The Iliad, which I've never done cover to cover. The urge has passed though, so when I rediscovered it skulking in one of the bedside book piles I took the decision to put it away, unlooked at. 

I have read one of the others though, and it was this, a Christmas present from my brother-in-law. 

It's a book about the place and  meaning of twenty famous literary houses. It's hardly heavy lit crit, but it was interesting, some bits more interesting than others, naturally. Lots of lovely pictures of places and first edition covers and authors. The places considered range from Manderley, to Gormenghast, from Mansfield Park to Bag End and lots of others in between. I enjoyed it, learned a few things, which is always good, and got some ideas for more reading, which is also always good. 

I mention Gormenghast, which I freely admit I have neve managed, despite several tries, to wade my way through, and honestly from the brief synopsis given of all three books of the trilogy I really can't see any point at all in giving it another go. No spoilers, but it seems the ending of Book 3 would leave me with the most frustrating of 'What?' moments. I am however haunted by the biographical details given about its author Mervyn Peake. I knew nothing about him except that he had been an artist as well as an author. Reading about his life I was put in mind of that quotation from Blake, that 'some are born to sweet delight and some are born to endless night.'  If anyone was ever born to endless night,  it was Peake. 

I'm A Winner - Literally!

A few weeks ago Sharon at Great British Yarns launched a colour competition. One of her lovely tam designs wasn't selling very well and she was told it was because of the colours she had used. (In fairness I need to put on record that she had not chosen the colours concerned herself). So she had a competition to find a new combination for it.  It was very simple to enter, all you had to do was choose five colours of Shetland Spindrift that you thought would knit up well together in the pattern. 

I wasn't going to enter. I've done very little proper Fair Isle knitting and the recently completed beanie shown on  here a few weeks ago was my first Fair Isle hat. But one morning when I was waiting for the OH to finish his preparations for going into town I thought I would have  a look at the website and see if I couldn't come up with  any suggestions. And it's not exactly a hardship to look at the colours of wool. 

In the end I did four. It would have been five but the pinky purply one was never born as I was just getting started on it when the OH loomed over me jangling the car keys intimating he was ready to go,  so I pressed send on the e-mail with the ones I'd done and off we went  to the library. I never gave it another thought.

Until that is I got an e-mail on Thursday to say I'd won! I was flabbergasted, as well as chuffed to bits. Here is a photograph of my winning colour combination, photographed by Sharon ... 

... and there's a blog post from GBY about the competition and how it was judged  here .

My prize was a GBY gift voucher and I used it to buy Laine magazine's only-just-published 52 Weeks of Shawls which I am very much looking forward to receiving. Happy Mail indeed.

And in fact I did get some Happy Mail yesterday, details another time.