i'm alive (croak)

this latest distinct lack of posts has been brought to you courtesy of a really crappy and persistent bout of flu. my 11 glorious wine-soaked gluttunous days off transformed into fever sweats and a throat so sore that little tears welled up in my eyes on each swallow. my christmas fairy is obviously a sadistic little bugger.

i'm on the mend now, and on the up-side, i still have leftover christmas wine and champagne. january is looking up.

busy days

newly knit socks with gratuitous dog

gingerbread not showing up so well on a brown table-top

christmas tree

n's sourdough bread

no pics of the beautiful carol service in canterbury cathedral last wednesday - it began in the dark with just the sound of a chorister singing once in royal david's city. made all the hairs on your neck stand up. then one by one, lighting the candles everyone was holding, until the whole cathedral was candle-lit. you could imagine people doing the same thing for the last 500 years. it made me cry. my dad would have loved it, so i  loved it for both of us.

no pics either of last christmas parcels posted and not-quite-written christmas cards (last post is thursday. that's - like - buckets of time. it will be fine). 

no pics of n snoozing on the couch after watching white christmas this evening - i think he has been  schmoozed into oblivion. not much chance of a white christmas out here - after some promising frosts this week it is now raining raining raining. what a surprise. 

last week of work for the year - and full steam ahead on the xmas prepping! the end is in sight - hang in there peoples....

wednesday? really?

i'm sitting with humph on our ugly sofa that was supposed to be temporary. it would be ok if it was ugly and comfortable, but it is, alas, just ugly. humph, who has a fine-tuned sense of beauty, for a dog, grimaces every time he deigns to jump up and join us for snuggles. at least, i hope it's the sofa he's grimacing at.

i've been working at home - a day of sorting through project invoicing. and that my friends, is about as much fun as it sounds. it has left me knackered, splayed across the sofa with a hundred yard stare. (edited to add - it's me, not the sofa with the hundred yard stare. although, that would probably explain why it makes us so uncomfortable)

help is at hand. h&j are arriving imminently with wine and tales of teaching and toddlers. if i am honest, i would rather (far rather) deal with project invoicing than a toddler.

even though we have sworn - sworn not to drink much tonight, n and i have already happily guzzled nearly through a good third of the first bottle. project invoicing will do that to you. i sense a dreadful case of wine flu on the morrow...

autumnal

is a great word - sounds so prestigious. autumnal.

i love autumn. trees trees trees. i am an uncontrollable picker-upper of leaves, which i then press into unsuspecting books and promptly forget about them. surprise ending indeed.

this morning the sun shone, the ground was frosty, and the trees were magnificent:

this is humphrey's look of enquiring disdain when i am not keeping up due to examining leaves and taking tree pictures:

that dog is amazingly eloquent. last wednesday n had a band practise here, and about 1030 pm humph decided he'd had enough and stood in the living room doorway, literally humphing and glaring at everyone. his message was clear. unfortunately for humph, everyone just laughed. "ah poor old humph" we say, and he sighs and goes to bed.

we also did some serious xmas prepping today:

36 bottles (6 gallons) of spiced ginger wine, and 40 pints of dark xmas ale. yum. sit tight my pretties, we will be with you shortly...

november is a great time of year. the dark days are here, but xmas is just around the corner, and everything starts vamping up. my calendar is gaining lovely entries like "xmas drinks" and "h's school concert at canterbury cathedral". we are discussing plans for boxing day and new years and looking forward to the break. so much anticipation even as adults - how do children manage?

i must stop now - i have slipped in at n's computer "for a second" and he is muttering darkly about my definition of "quick". i tried pointing out that in relation to, say, glaciers, i am positively speedy, but he is having none of it. i think he and humph are in cahoots.

autumn in case you missed it

today began in the dark, again, at the ungodly hour of 6am, catching an early train to meet a contractor at one of my sites, who then DID NOT TURN UP TILL 1030. not that i'm bitter or anything. really.

it got a lot better as i knocked off at 1230 for a half day (or 3/4 when you start at bloody 6) to go meet h in canterbury and have a lovely drink-sodden afternoon. which we did. i had a bit of time to kill on the way home and nipped by canterbury cathedral -

and my favourite - the west gate

i know - blurry (see alcohol soaking, previously) but imagine seeing those gates closed against you as a pilgrim , having walked for weeks. the weather would have been much the same, i imagine.

canterbury looks good in the fog.

and in case you ever wondered - 

well indeed.

jamming

n and the boys are practising tonight in the living room so i am holed upstairs this evening. it’s quite fantastic in many ways. proximity and boredom have forced me to undertake several tasks i have been putting off for some time. i have reduced the clothing mountain on my chest of drawers to a few paltry mis-matched socks. generally i find it saves a great deal of time to simply put the clothes on top of the drawers rather than into them. that is, right up until the time when you have four minutes to get out of the house before you’ll miss the train and you can’t find your navy cardigan/bra/white tshirt etc etc and you rummage hopelessly through the clothes mountain swearing to yourself that tonight you will put these away like a normal person and get up ten minutes earlier tomorrow in the bargain if only please for the love of god you can find that cardigan/bra/tshirt. it is at this point that the whole thing literally falls apart.


not only that, but i have put away the (little worn) summer clothes and pulled out the heavy duty wool jumpers. the cardigans never even got put away this year – for once out of necessity rather than idleness.

i decided upon my winter mitten plan of attack (5 pairs before christmas will require a plan not to mention fortitude, determination, and a high boredom threshold. no problems there then *cough*).

and best of all i booked lunch at a swish canterbury restaurant next week for my friend h and i. we have decided we will be restrained and chose the four-course tasting menu (with wine). on a tuesday. i’ve booked a half day. i love being a contractor.

this all has gone some way to making up for a crazy-pie day at work. it’s just so busy it’s hard to know where to start. i know i must be missing so much i should be doing but i just don’t have the time. by the end of october i will have worked 5 out of the last 6 weekends. for every email i delete/archive 6 more come in. it’s carnage.

yet somehow what needs to get done gets done and i am still above water, for now at least. and at least tomorrow i will be able to find my cardigan.

faith

so i finally listed out all the knitting projects i want to get done before christmas, with approximate guesses of time required to knit them. as long as i start in august everything should be just fine.

some fo's*

* finished objects in knitting land. there are wip's (works in progress) and fo's.

and two more different projects probably do not exist.  first up - bam! pow! these are for the most awesome geo. when i saw the pattern i knew she had to have them, even if i am still learning colourwork and my technique is, well, a bit ropey in places. good practice and super fun to knit

the second is my first attempt at lacework. well, second attempt really as the first incarnation of this got frogged (it was for the best) (haha - it's still on the sidebar!! seascape. ergh.). i swore at this more than anything else so far, and i think i probably knit the whole thing about three times for all the ripping back i had to do. it is unlikely you will ever see anything like this here again, but - but - oh the wool was beautiful - a cashmere/silk/merino blend, hand-dyed. and by the last quarter, i wasn't ripping out quite so much and (don't tell anyone) sort of kind of liked it a bit. we'll see. it's a gift as well - it should be arriving to its destination soon.

 lace is amazing - as you're knitting, the project looks like a packet of dried ramen noodles. you think, i am expending this amount of mental energy, sweat, and tears for spaghetti junction? then you block it (soak it in water, very carefully squeeze dry, and pin out into shape). the pattern pops out, angels sing, and you are hooked. it's a dirty world, knitting. don't say i didn't warn you.

cutting it close

the amount of wool left over from my latest baby jumper project:

steeking sunday

 how do you turn a jumper into a cardigan? why you cut right up the front. seriously. it's called steeking and the first time you do it you will probably need some sort of sedative.the white yarn you can see on the sides of the cut is a crocheted reinforcement, then the whole thing gets bundled up neat and tidy and you would never ever guess that something as crass as scissors had been anywhere near. but first you have to CUT UP YOUR KNITTING.

to recover, here's a lovely pic of humph soaking up the sun in the entryway. phew!