Baking Subscription - The Final Year - January

Yes, I've decided this will be the last year of my baking subscription. I pay six monthly so as soon as they have taken the July instalment I shall cancel. It's been fun, and I have some fabulous recipes, with no doubt a few more to come this year but it's time to call a halt. Apart from nay thing else, a friend bought me a lovely baking book for Christmas which I would like to work my way through and I'm more likely to embark on that if I'm not getting distracted by baking boxes. Plus, it's no secret that I find some of them a bit faffy.

Take this month's bake for example. Lemon and Almond Tart. Here's a slice of it

It was delicious. And that was without the lattice work of lemon icing I should have put over the top. And the ring of lemon buttercream roses I was supposed to pipe around the edge. 

Books to Read Poster No 33

Well, we must be roughly a third of the way through now, which doesn't seem like much considering how long I've had the poster. 

I noticed recently that a vertical column had no books on it read at all, and a horizontal row that had only one book done. Happily where they intersected I actually had the book(s) so that was what I picked to read next. 

Here's the picture 

and given that, and that  I previously mentioned it was a trilogy I suspect it's an easy guess for some; His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman. This is another one I had previously read, and I remembered one and two quite clearly and whole swathes of number three not at all. I suspect that that was an elective amnesia, because while I enjoyed the first two I loathed the last one. I found it confused, over-written and deeply depressing. In addition I'm not quite sure what demographic he was aiming for. Books 1 and 2 would excite and enthrall anyone from 10 up, but I'd be loth to give Book 3  to anyone in their early teens who wasn't fairly mature and optimistic in their outlook. I know Pullman is militaristically atheist  and that's fair enough, and I agree with him that the institution of the church has done terrible cruel and unforgiveable things in its long history. but I don't feel I need to be clapped around the head with it quite so forcibly and for quite so long, especially with no recognition of some of the good that it's done. 

That said there are some fabulous characters in these books; he has  a gift for creating people who almost leap off the page, and they're rounded ones too, no-one is totally good or bad. Sone of his ideas are fabulous too; the armoured bears, the witch clans, the whole concept of daemons .... Really I wish he'd just stopped at the end of Book 2! 

I know he has since written more about Lyra since but I don't think I can face it. Certainly not yet.

I've finally accepted that

 life's too short to finish a book you're not enjoying.  

I've always thought that giving up on a book part way through was some sort of sin - goodness only knows where that puritanical notion came from, but it was fairly firmly entrenched from a very young age until quite recently. I was still feeling slightly guilty about giving up on that Peter James one a few months ago which I wortte about somewhere on the blog. The book that finally persuaded me that throwing up my hands in horror and frustration was not only allowable but sometimes the only thing to do was this

I've avoided Cole's books as being not my sort of thing for many years despite the miles of shelving her work takes up in crime fiction sections in bookshops. This was partly because I'm not much of a thriller reader and partly because a friend told me once that she'd read one and enjoyed it so much she had picked up another, only to find that it was basically all the same characters but with different names.and a plot that was eerily similar to the first one she read. Formulaic, she said.

This one came from my friend E, it was next in the bag after Hogfather so I just picked it up and opened it. I lasted until about page 100, which was only a fraction of the book, and frankly I should have ditched it long before then. But I wanted to give it a 'fair go' as my Aussie friends would say. so I pressed on. 

Apart from none of he characters being particularly likeable, a complaint I make so often I feel I should be bale to bind  it to a key so that I can add it at one stroke rather than having to type it out in full I was appalled by what I hesitate to call the 'style' of the writing. Cole does not believe in saying a thing once if she can get away with saying it seven or eight times. Possibly she is paid by the page. Or perhaps she just dictates this stuff into a recorder, never listens back to it and sends it off to her publishers who can't be bothered to supply an editor, because the stuff sells regardless. 

And Cole is a best seller so millions out there must like it. I'm just not among them. I am however grateful to the book for finally teaching me the lesson that it's sometimes a waste of time to keep on plodding through a book that's doing nothing for you. 

I Made A Thing

 and I'm really pleased with it. 

Honestly, I know  it's nothing  to write home about, it's just a small needle case made from the free kit that came on the front of a cross stitch magazine. A competent sewer could have knocked it off in an afternoon. 

But there's the thing. I'm not even a half way competent sewer. Partly this is because my mother trained as a teacher of Domestic Science, (later known as Home Ec., later given some fancy name when the government decreed that everyone had to study a 'technology' qualification.)  Basically, cooking, sewing and household management. You'd think this would mean that I was a super whizz at all those things but I'm not, because however patient my mother was with her school pupils, she was not particularly patient when teaching her children and she also demanded as near to perfection as you could get, with the result that it always seemed that however well you sewed anything, when she looked at it, it was never good enough. The other reason is that  we moved house when I was twelve; at my old school the very old-fashioned teacher believed in learning to sew everything by hand before letting her pupils loose on a machine that shockingly made sewing easier, and at the new school learning to use a sewing machine was the first thing that was mastered when the girls arrived fresh form their junior schools. As a result I was never taught to use a sewing machine, sewing lessons became absolute nightmares and I dropped Domestic Science at the very first opportunity. 

So that's why I can't/don't sew. That said, although the needle case is wonky, it is at least not put together with raw edges encased in bright green blanket stitch which is what the instructions in the magazine would have had me do. Since I hemmed the edges of the lining it's a bit too small, and despite all my efforts the edges aren't quite straight, In fact it's a bit lopsided every which way. But, I Don't Care. It's sewing and I did it. It's pretty and it's useful and with all its faults, I love it. 

Knitting - but not mine

 I received a parcel from a friend in America earlier in the week and among the things she sent me was this beautiful wrap

I love it in so many ways. One because it's gorgeous. Two because it's really lovely to have someone think about you and put all that time and effort and care into making something for you. And three because it's lace and I'm a rubbish lace knitter. I think that knitters generally fall into two categories; lace or cable and I'm definitely a cable girl. This doesn't mean I don't like lacy knitting - quite the reverse.  I just can't do it very well. At this point I hear my mother's voice telling me that in that case I should practie it more and then I would get better at it - but honestly? I've got to the age when I want to concentrate on doing the things I enjoy rather than forcing myself to improve at things that I don't. 

I shall enjoy wearing the wrap - perhaps at the opera if we ever make it there again! 

2022 Knitting: It's All About the Blankets

Well it's not all about the blankets obviously but the intention is that a lot of it will be about the blankets and in this connection - voila -

This is the latest completed strip from the Debbie Abrahams 2019  Mystery Blanket which I'm intending to work on side by side with the one I started with the Giddy Yarns Advent. That's the third complete strip of seven, and I'm part way through two others 

As always we'll see how it goes. As a few peeks at other knitters vlogcasts have shown me, we're all full of good ideas and intentions, but short on time and 'occasionally' the will power to stick with what we're working on rather than cast on something new. 

Home Safe and Sound

The OH finally made it back about 11.00 yesterday morning, after an unexpected change of ferry, a car that resolutely refused to start, a night on the boat  and another call to the AA to identify someone who would come out on Sunday morning and tow the car to our local garage. Whish is where it is now, and who knows when we will get her back. 

We both devoutly hope that it will be a while before either of us has a couple of days even fractionally as frazzly as Friday and Saturday were. 

But the main thing is he's back. 

And in other good news the cat food turned up this morning! 

Well, what a scunner!

The OH took Son No 2 back to Glasgow today. All was going well until they tried to get going again after a meal stop in Inverness. The car wouldn't start. It eventually was coaxed into life and drove to Glasgow no bother. However once there it refused to start again. 

Many hours and an AA sign up later it transpires the car has a faulty camshaft sensor that needs replaced but the AA guy couldn't do it. He also opined that every single garage in Glasgow was booked solid for the next two weeks, and by the  time he had got to the car and found out what was wrong most of them were closed for the weekend anyway. so OH couldn't even start to try and find one to do the repair. 

Ker-ching! 

He is not a happy bunny as there's no sensible way to get back until the car is fixed unless he can get a flight, and apart from not liking being away from home there's not much food in the house for me as we were expecting to do a supermarket shop on Sunday or Monday. Not that I can't shop for myself and the cats  if I need to.

The one small bright spot is that our Christmas present for Son No 2, which a courier delivery man had just left outside the door of his flat several days before Christmas but after son no 2 had been collected and brought here, had been taken in by a neighbour so he has it now. I had had visions of it disappearing, not unlike our cat food delivery which another courier maintains he has tried to deliver twice to an empty house. Only thing is house wasn't empty, lights on, sunroom door not locked ... Possibly he has been trying to deliver to the wrong place.  

Hassle, hassle, hassle

Anyway here is son no 2 modelling the jacket, 

He loves it. So that's something. 

At Last - A Finished Book!

 

This is the current book for Saturday Slaughters, which we should be discussing  this Saturday coming. The meeting has been postponed for a week in the hope that current Scottish guidelines about indoor gatherings (currently limited to people from three households) will be changed, although I'm not holding my breath. 

I'm quite conflicted about this one. At first I was put off, partly by some bits of clumsy writing, partly by some box ticking to signify how what we used to call 'right on' the writer is, and partly because the protagonist, a mortuary technician, talks to the dead people in her care and sometimes gets talked back to. Some people are fine with supernatural elements mixed with their crime fiction, I'm not. 

But then I got drawn into the story, which was very good and I have to say the writer was very good at misdirection even with a very limited cast of characters. 

And then I got to the end section and the denouement was such a cop-out that I felt cheated. Not over the identity of the killer but the mechanics of how they were caught. 

Even so, if you're a fan of crime fiction I'd say it's worth a look. 

Elsewhere I am making good progress with the latest Poster book; that said, it's not one book but three and although I am almost through the second one I doubt I'll go straight on to number three. 

Languishimg in Limbo

I am still here, and I'm busy but I don't seem to be accomplishing or doing anything worth writing about. I'm reading but  haven't finished a book recently, I'm knitting but have nothing finished to show for it, ditto the cross stitching that I've picked up. The weather has been foul so we haven't been able to get out for many walks and the only one we did recently I didn't take my camera, and it's even a bit too dark to tackle jigsaw puzzles. I suppose it's just that time of year. 

One good thing is that the whole series of The Fourth Arm is now available on You Tube and I've been enjoying that very much with five episodes to go. It still stands up well, although modern viewers might find it a tad slow. The most remarkable thing to me is the lack of swearing, the occasional damn is as bad as it gets. I'm not a fan of the high levels of blasphemy and bad language which pepper our TV screens these days, but it's a sign I suppose of how desensitised to it we have all become that the lack of it here merely makes the drama seem less realistic. 

Hopefully there will be a more interesting post soon. 

Rounding off the Advents

It now being the 7th Jan it is more than time that I finished reporting on my advents, so here are 23, and 24.

Yarn is Cair Paravel (23) and Kings and Queens of Narnia (24) . On 24th I also got a bookmark from the German Advent along with the extra-as-a-Christmas-present we had agreed to send, which was a lovely project bag. The stitch markers were a pair of silver trees (23rd) and on 24th another enamelled cat with flowers. There was also one for 25th which was the advent logo on a stitch marker.(Click on the photos if you want to enlarge and see them more clearly) I have to say that I have used lots of these stitch markers since I got them which is a nice feeling. 

I have also crocheted all the yarn into squares - as so. 

I was very pleased that I managed to keep up, working each days wool on the day it was unwrapped.  I'm waiting for some wool that I ordered now to border them.

I have two very large  but very relaxed projects  in mind for this year and these are the starting point of one of them. I said to my sister that 2022 was the year I was  going to zap through all my old cross stitch projects, knit up all my wool, make 1000 cards thus decreasing my stash of card making supplies and get through the rest of my Books to Read Poster.  In my spare time I thought I might sort out world peace

Ho, ho, ho!

In fact I am planning to take  a much more relaxed attitude to my crafts this year,trying to bear in mind that they are there to be enjoyed and not as some sort of moral imperative. I have said no more socks as I made about two dozen pairs last year. I doubt I can go a whole year without making a single pair, but they're certainly not at the top of the list. 

We'll see how it goes. 

Something I watched; Something I read.

 This is something I watched yesterday. 

I dabbled a lot in the MCU  in the summer when staying with Son No 2 and again when he came to visit in August, but I had hitherto managed to avoid The Incredible Hulk. Even as a young girl when I was vaguely aware of superhero comics I never liked the hulk and I still don't. However son no 2 was determined I should watch it, he's a bit of a completist, so yesterday evening when there was nothing to watch on TV (Ok that's almost a given these days) and the OH was otherwise engaged pretending to shoot enemy planes out of the sky, we settled down to watch it. I think it would be fair to say I didn't like it very much. Apart from my general dislike of the main character it wasn't helped by the presence of Liv Tyler acting even less, if you can believe it possible, than she did in the Lord of the Rings movies. I would say she phoned in her performance but she didn't evince sufficient energy to make me believe she was capable of switching a phone on. Other than that, bang crash wallop and a lot of wibble wibble pretend science.Also a wasted Tim Roth who spent a lot of time looking bemused; possibly wondering how his agent had persuaded him to take the part. I know all MCU films have a lot of crash bang wallop and plot holes you can drive  a tank through but they generally have some good acting, and an amusing  knowing script. The Hulk script was totally leaden, possibly because the lead actor apparently kept rewriting it on a daily basis. Perhaps he should have stuck to acting and let the scriptwriters do their thing. It might have made for a better film. 

This is the book I finished yesterday

I used to read a lot of Pratchett, and then it all got a bit samey and I got a bit fed up with it, especially as it got to the stage that if you missed  a book you were lost when the next one came out as new characters kept appearing so I stopped. This one was passed on to me recently by my friend E, who has passed on a lot of books and I am determined to read a lot of them this year. This was the first one I picked up and I enjoyed it very much. DEATH has always been one of my favourite Discworld characters, and I'm also attached to the Raven. Both of them featured strongly in this. A lovely Christmas-ish plot, told with  a lot of wit and panache, and much to say about giving, charity and how (badly) the world works. There was also a riff on 'fine dining' which, as someone who has been forced to watch more episodes of Masterchef in all its incarnations than she would have sat through of her own accord, I found very funny. Although not as funny as the ravens constant quest for eyeballs. 

Happy New Year!

I appreciate the sentiment is a couple of days late; what can I say, the world's still an odd place just now. 

Last year I had a photo project where I took a picture in Firth Park from the same spot every month* and I'm planning to do the same this year but at our local beach, Cara. Much easier and quicker to get to, and although it won't change through the seasons  in quite the same overt way as the trees and flowers did in the park the tides, the weather, the people and the shape of the sand will so I hope I'll find it interesting. 

* The OH put these together along with one monthly close up into a video for me. Unfortunately although I managed to post it to Facebook I haven;t been able to reproduce the trick on the blog, but I'll keep tryign and maybe I'll crack it by the end of the year. 

Meanwhile here are a few snaps from  yesterdays walk on the beach.

Dinosaur footprint! 

Look at all the birds!

There's been some storm to blow all this weed onto the beach.  

And today we went to St Mary's for a walk but it was very very cold so we didn't go quite as far as planned!