Adventures on two wheels

I spent a day in London a few weeks ago, where I went on a Fat Tire Bike Tour. I went on the Paris tours (and applied for a job as a tour guide) when I lived there. I think Paris is a slightly more bike-friendly city, since most of the London tour was through Hyde Park/Kensington Park/Green Park.

Lovely parks, all, (and the guides were great), but if I only had a weekend to see London and spent it on the insides of the parks, I might be annoyed. As it is, I know London pretty well and enjoyed the spin through town on the bikes. Especially as it was Sunday so the roads around Buckingham Palace were closed.

The bikes all had names (of people mentioned on the tour). I was being shown the town by a Mr. Eric Clapton. We got along very well.

I learned in Paris that taking a picture from the bike while riding is...er...hazardous to your health.  So here is the back of 10 Downing Street with the London Eye in the background.

Continuing the bike theme, John and I took our bikes to Cambridge on the train last weekend. In spite of the extortionate ticket prices (and recent railway strikes by overpaid but disgruntled employees), it was actually pretty painless. Bringing your bikes on the train is free (woot!), and there are special racks for them. I could see how the racks might get kind of full on a weekday, but we had plenty of room when we were going.

We met up for the day with some family friends from New Ro, who were enjoying a vacation in Paris/London/Cambridge. We rode our bikes out to Grantchester, where we hit up The Blue Ball Inn for some extremely tasty warm, flat beer of the Adnams variety. YUM. We then wobbled to another pub for more beer and lunch. Tough life. Then we went into Cambridge itself, where we walked through the gardens of Clare College and went into the Kings' chapel.

If you can't make it good, make it RED.

We had a blast of a day - the weather was gorgeous, the company was great, and we have now decided that the ONLY way to get around Cambridge is by bike. It's a long walk from the station to town, and the car situation is a nightmare. There was even a free bike parking garage at the mall. What more could you want?

Pictures, soon, I promise!

There are pictures on my camera that I'd like to blog, but they're downstairs and I'm upstairs and it's not going to happen.

While I was in Rhode Island, there was a huge marketing campaign on for "The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane." I definitely thought the book looked interesting, but not so much that I wanted to buy it. Instead, I went to the super awesome magical Stowmarket Library. Apparently in the UK, the book is called "The Lost Book of Salem". And it was a great read. I love magic/witches/historical fiction/romance, and while the end was a little unsatisfying, the book on the whole zipped right along.


It was my father-in-law's birthday a few weeks ago...I made the "Best chocolate cake ever" (according to the website). I have to say, I agree with them. It was pretty darned awesome. I left out the coffee, and put strawberries on top instead of the chocolate curls. Make it - it's yummy!

New Rochelle Noms

I discovered a new favorite meal while I was in New Ro. My parents sold the Big Yellow House last fall, and have been living in a surprisingly nice (for downtown New Rochelle) apartment near the station.

My first morning in, my mom suggested that I head around the block to the Starlite Diner. My dad is a regular customer (probably more regular than his doctor would like...), and it was the perfect re-entry into NewYawk.

On the front door, there is a sign that says "Breakfast Special: Bacon, Egg & Cheese on a Roll with Coffee: $3.50". Mmmmm. It doesn't actually come with a coffee, it comes with a caaawfeeee. The bacon is super-crispy and entirely un-English, the cheese is solidly American (and gloriously melty), and the roll is one of the quintessentially New York squooshy ones.

Here's a picture my dad took, last week, of Michael, the dispenser of bacon-egg-and-cheese-on-a-roll-with-a-cawfee.

I think it's probably good that I don't live in New Ro any more - the temptation to go every morning would be more than I could resist.

Notes from the garden

I'm not sure what happened with my seeds this year. I meant to plant 2 courgette plants and 2 sunflowers, and somehow ended up with 4 sunflowers and no courgettes. So here is one of the happy sunflowers, living in my vegetable patch. There's a bee on it (we have a very bee-friendly garden), which is good. Not as good as if there were courgettes on it, though.

The rest of the veggies are coming along - we have a ton of tomato plants that are all full of green tomatoes. A little hot weather and they'll be ready. YUM. And yes, those are more sunflowers.

To continue the flower theme, this is my new favorite necklace. I bought it with Andrea at Surya Satya [ed: I got the Yoga words mixed up and the websites look deceptively similar!] down near Christopher Street. It hits at just the right place on my neck and is really pretty.

Between flights, train trips, afternoons by the pool, and the plague that I seem to have picked up on the way home, I've been doing lots of reading.

I'd been recommended Eragon, and it was perfectly absorbing airplane reading. A little Harry Potter, a little LoTR, and some dragons. Surprisingly well-written, especially since the author was in high school at the time. I have it on good authority that the movie is terrible - don't bother with it.

For my book group, I read Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express. It took me a little while to get into it, but I loved it. It cracked me up - it's full of really dry and British humor, and the ending was really clever.

I also read the second Matthew Shardlake novel, by C.J. Sansom. Dark Fire takes place in Tudor London and is a somewhat forgettable but entertaining whodunnit.

I'm about half way through Stephene Meyer's The Host. Yes, she's the one who wrote Twilight. I reserved it at the library back when I finished Breaking Dawn, and it finally came in last weekend. So far, so good (but no sparkly vampires...)

Back from NY

Holy moly - it's been a month since I posted. I was in NY for two weeks of it, which is my excuse. Sort of.

I finally managed to connect with the bell ringers at Trinity Church on Wall St in NYC. This picture is of the never-before-seen-by-Kate combination of a bell tower with working bells and an American flag. The bells were amazing, the people were SUPER nice and great ringers, and if/when we move back to the US, I will be putting in more appearances at their tower. Awesome.

I basically spent the two weeks going from meal to meal, and person to person. I missed a few (you know who you are and I apologize), but in the end I ran out of time. I also fit a few days up in RI with my parents, which was really nice. Dels and fried clams and the bike path and the Bristol 4th of July parade. Here I am with my Dad (the fried clams are just off camera).

The award for "most distance travelled," which usually belongs to me, was awarded to my college roommate, Liz. She flew in (not just to see me) from New Zealand. We spent a very fun New York City day together, waving at tourists on open-top buses and pretending to be models in Soho. Wait, normal people don't do that?

And we were both Pinkberry virgins. Not anymore!

Below, the TRUE reason for the trip (yes, Mom and Dad, I love you a lot, but she wins on cuteness): my (other) friend Liz's new baby girl. Her name is Gabi and she's awesome. It was all I could do not to baby-nap her and take her home with me. Liz would have noticed, I think. Isn't the cuteness just overwhelming? Liz took this picture on my last day in the US - I got to feed, burp, stroll(er?), cuddle, and generally hang out with Gabi. And Liz, of course. Well, not the feeding or burping.

I come by it honestly!

Our Evil Fridge of Doom is on the fritz again. We're starting the formal complaints process with the manufacturer. 4 callout-requiring faults in 2 years is too many, we think.

We're also anticipating needing to defrost it (again) some time in the next few weeks. Which means that the culinary delights that are currently in there are being eaten up.

We had some people over for a BBQ last weekend, and had a last minute cancellation which left us with a bit more food than we needed. Mostly peppers (we were going to roast them on the grill). I don't particularly like peppers, unless they're in something. However, on Sunday night, they really did need eating. I found a recipe on the web for stuffed peppers, which basically used rice, a meat of some sort, stock, and some herbs and spices, all together in the oven for 45 minutes. As part of the freezer raid, I found some turkey pieces and some stock (which we think was turkey stock). Followed the instructions, mixed it all together, cooked and ate it.  Reasonably yummy (remember, I don't like peppers to begin with).

Then, John said, "When was this turkey from, by the way?"

"Hmm," I mused, "We last had turkey...um...oh. I think it might be from...er...Thanksgiving."

Oops.

When I mentioned it to my parents, though, my mom reassured me that I do, in fact, come by it honestly. My maternal grandmother was a really good cook but as a child of the depression had a reputation for keeping "vintage" meatloaf  (meatloaves?) in her freezer. And the scary part was that she would eventually eat it...

I also have started using Evernote, which I think is going to be a good way to keep track of what's in the freezer. A sort of anti-shopping-list.

An Indigo Girls review, 2 months late

The latest Indigo Girls album, Poseidon and the Bitter Bug, came out at the end of March. However, that was the US release date, and since my iTunes is configured for the UK (so I can use my iPhone), I had to wait. And wait. And wait some more. And then I got distracted.

I finally downloaded the album this weekend, and listened to it all the way through at work today (hooray for having my own office). Amy, Emily and I go WAAY back - my dad first heard them on NPR back in the early 90s, then I spent lots of time sitting around campfires in Vermont singing Closer To Fine, then listened to them all through high school, went to a few concerts (and wrote a few musicology papers) in college, and then have seen them perform in New York (lots of times) and Cambridge (just once). I'm predisposed to enjoy me some Indigos.

I'm still on the fence about this album, though, which I think is partly a result of the way it's presented. I bought the 'deluxe edition' on iTunes, and it features every song in both a "studio" and "acoustic" version. Why? Give me the same number of tracks, once, and YOU as the artist decide if it sounds better as the studio version or the acoustic version. Please? Even I, the hardcore IG fan who can listen to hours and hours of Amy 'n Emily, have trouble listening to the same album twice in a row. And what will become of me if I put the album on "shuffle"? I may suffer the indignity of hearing the same song twice in a row. On MORE than one song!

Taking the album as ONE set of songs, though, the songs are classic Indigo. There were two where I found the music particularly interesting:

First, "Love Of Our Lives" opens with Amy and Emily singing in unison, followed by a section with them singing in octaves - I can't think of any other songs of theirs where they sing together without harmonising for more than a note or two.

Second (although it's earlier on the album), "Sugar Tongue" has Amy singing a very "Emily" song, in a much higher register than she usually sings. It makes her sound completely different - it's almost like a falsetto.

Musicologists, start your engines!

Old Married Couple

John and I had our 3-year anniversary yesterday. I still have moments of "we've been married for HOW long?"

Burt Reynolds in Suffolk (well, almost)

We rented A Bunch Of Amateurs this weekend. The general premise is that Burt Reynolds plays a washed-up Hollywood actor who ends up coming to "Stratford" in England to perform King Lear. He thinks he's going to Stratford-upon-Avon to perform with the RSC, when in fact he's in the (fictional) village of Stratford St John, performing with the amateur drama society. And where have they put this village supposedly at the end of the earth? Suffolk, baby! They didn't actually FILM it in Suffolk (which is silly, since the style of house-building here is completely different from the houses in the film).

John and I both thought it was pretty funny - Imelda Staunton was really good, and Burt Reynolds was well-cast as the no-longer-leading-man. They were both entirely overshadowed by a supporting role from the Suffolk Mobile Libraries van. Too funny.


I can FINALLY blog about this, since the gift has been given: I made a baby quilt for my friend Liz's new baby, Gabi. Both of Gabi's parents went to the University of Wisconsin, so my initial thought was to knit a red baby sweater with a big W in it.

I think everyone is glad that I abandoned that idea once I found some Wisconsin Badgers fabric on the web. I ordered it, had it shipped to England, matched it up with some polka dots, and started in. I intended to make a small-ish crib quilt for her, and then went a little overboard when I was cutting my squares. Pattern? Me? Naw! It ended up about the size of a twin bed, FAR too big for a newborn (even if she IS tall like her dad). I had some leftover fabric, so I made a stroller blanket as well.

Here she is, modeling it.

There are a few more scraps left (a yard of Wisconsin fabric goes a very long way), so there will be a few more UW items delivered when I'm in NY next month.

My little (BIG) brother

My brother came to visit last week. He has now decided that Suffolk is NOT entirely composed of fields full of sheep. There are some fields with pigs in them.

Here we are with the Bury St Edmunds Cathedral tower:

Me (note: fully airborne) in front of the Norman Tower (12 bells, baby!):

Future beer...mmm. We took the tour at Greene King (yes, beer purists, it's not the best beer, but it's pretty tasty). There were four rules, according to our tour guide: stay with the tour (it's a working factory), don't step in puddles, turn off your phones, and don't touch anything.

We'd all been up to the roof (great view) and back down again, and were standing near the mash tuns when one of the women on the tour (who had been an insufferable know-it-all) started turning a valve on one of the huge pots. Edward and I yelped and ran to the other side of the room, and our tour guide caught her before she caused the whole thing to explode. EEK!

Here's Ed, with some actual beer, at lunch (note, beer AND cider):

We also stopped in at Ickworth, where Ed was treated to the full experience. We arrived at 4:30, knowing that the house was already closed. We were told that the gardens were still open, so paid our £4 each to go see them. When we got to the gardens, there was a sign on the gate saying that last admission had been at 4:30, with the gardens closing at 5. We tried to find a staff member to get our money back, but there were none. Finally, we found someone, who let us out into the garden, where we were then yelled at by the gardener who told us we shouldn't have been there. It was truly mind-boggling. I'm toying with the idea of issuing a proper complaint to the National Trust, but I don't think I have the energy.

We did a running tour of the garden, then walked down to the falling-down church. Don't worry, we didn't go in...

In stark contrast, we went to Framlingham Castle on our way back from Aldeburgh the next day. Competent staff, clear signs, and a very English "if you fall off the 50-foot wall it's your own damn fault" set of fences. We gave it a shot to reenact all of the various potential amusements, listed below:

We had a blast (and I got to visit a whole bunch of things that I only really think to do when I'm playing "tour guide")!

Non-horizontal horizons

We've been letting James take pictures with our SLR. He has his own camera (my trusty Canon Elph), but he doesn't always have it with him.

He has a really good eye for composition, and he's always coming up with really unlikely angles to shoot from, but we've found that about 80% of his pictures list ever so slightly to the right. As if the pressure of pushing down the shutter button tilts the camera. Teehee.

Here are two. I'm an evil stepmother and have left them "au naturel" (i.e. a little slonchwise):

These were both taken at Snape Maltings, after we fled Aldeburgh on Monday. (Aldeburgh? On the May Bank Holiday Monday? With scattered showers? WHAT WERE WE THINKING??)

My garden has been coming along (to the detriment of the blog, I think). Here are some seedlings (some that I started myself and some that have been adopted - thanks, Janet!). The ones in the foreground are sunflowers, and the first one has just popped above the soil this morning.

I'm completely obsessed with Gardener's World on the BBC. Who else but the Beeb would film and air a gardening program for n00bs like me, detailing exactly what to do, when. It was their idea to plant the sunflower seeds in POTS - apparently slugs (::seething hatred::) love to munch on freshly-planted sunflower seeds. Can't get 'em up here, bitches!

Oh, and this was a "plant in a basket" that Michelle gave us back in January. It was supposed to last two weeks. Ahem. It's happy as a clam on the windowsill...

After all my evangelising about how awesome the library is, John has discovered that they have a fairly extensive art movie collection. £2 for a week, per movie. Can't beat it!

We watched The Science of Sleep (another movie featuring a naked Gael Garcia Bernal - does the boy not like to wear clothes?), which was suitably surreal but quite enjoyable.

Pasta a la John

John made dinner tonight. What a guy. And it was such a tasty recipe that I have to post it here.

Pasta a la John (a riff on Pasta Carbonara)


olive oil
butter (this is not a low-fat recipe)
bacon (we used smoked English bacon)
small tomatoes
mushrooms, sliced
garlic, sliced
creme fraiche
mild chili powder
black pepper

Put the pasta water on to boil. Chop the bacon, mushrooms, tomatoes, and garlic.

Once the water is boiling, start the pasta. At this point, add the olive oil and butter to the pan, with some chili powder and ground black pepper. Once you can smell the chili powder, add the bacon. Stir it around for a minute or two, then add the garlic. Once the garlic starts to soften, add the mushrooms and tomatoes, and a little of the pasta water. Simmer gently.

When the pasta is cooked, drain it. Add a spoonful of creme fraiche to the simmering sauce, stir, and simmer briefly. Stir the pasta in and enjoy!

It was REALLY good - he can make it again whenever he wants!

Evil Stepmother Of Doom

We took James to the Abbey Gardens yesterday afternoon, and he had a blast with the SLR. This was far and away the best picture.

We've...um...also turned into Boy Racers. All of us. Our v. nice Citroen C5 was coming up for its 90,000 mile service and some extremely expensive repairs, so we sent it to the great big racetrack in the sky (well, we traded it in), and bought a Mazda3. Sport edition. HOT. We didn't MEAN to get the Sport version, but they had pre-registered it and it had 68 miles on the clock and was waaay cheaper than it should have been and they're releasing a new design in May and wanted to get it off the lot and we drank the Mazda Kool-Aid and it zooms. And has tinted windows in the back and a bling-y stereo. It will also eventually get about 45 mpg, which is a fair improvement over La Voiture Francaise.

John and Travis stripped and re-varnished our front door this weekend, which meant that we were sort of tied to the house (we had to leave the door open until the varnish dried). Obviously, the only sensible thing to do was to hand-wash and wax the car, and vacuum it. Because there were at least three specs of dust on the carpets and two dead bugs on the front (they're gone now).

After we finished all the varnishing, lawn mowing, and car-washing, John made a movie.

Leftover chicken a la Stowmarkate

We had the in-laws over for Easter and roasted a chicken, which was extremely tasty. I then made stock from the bones and veg, but had a fair amount of chicken left. We also had a few cherry tomatoes and some creme fraiche from an attempt at Scrambled Eggs A La Gordon Ramsay (which was very tasty).

Leftover Chicken A La Stowmarkate

Ingredients:
Leftover chicken (duh)
Creme fraiche (or sour cream)
Tomatoes (or peas or whatever veg you have)
Some just-cooked pasta (with a little of the pasta water)
Dried tarragon

Mix all the ingredients together in an oven-proof dish, then heat under the broiler on medium for about 5 minutes.

Nom nom nom.

And, patience has been rewarded. Here's one of the videos the boys made last week - the rest link from this one!

[UPDATE: The subtitles on this one came out sort of small - if you make it full-screen you should be able to read them].

Nene Valley

We used John's birthday present from my parents (a two-year, family membership to the Nene Valley Railway) and went up to ride the trains today.

John and James have spent all week making movies (some of which will hopefully be posted on YouTube), and we had some fun shooting scenes from our version of The Great Escape today. Here's one of my all-time favorite pictures of the sm. boy:

We had a really good time taking pics and videos and running around the station, although John's having trouble editing it all into a coherent story line. Oh well, it was fun anyway!

Here's James, on the train, thoroughly enjoying his book (a Darren Shan). What is it with us and vampires?

And this one's for my dad:

As the daughter of a train geek (and ex-LIRR signalman) who married a train geek, I think this should be my new motto:

 

Here's a gratuitous railway shot, for all the fanboys (Dad, mostly):

 

Recipe for happiness

Combine:
6 days
1 round-trip flight from JFK to LHR
1 rental car
1 Bach Choir Concert
1 quarter peal (Bob Doubles, inside!)
2 visits to Narey's
1 forsythia bush
2 rosebushes
1 dwarf red maple
1 roast chicken
2 curries
1 Pizza Express
1 windswept and interesting visit to Sutton Hoo (with a tour)
2 pub lunches
6 back issues of Country Living
1 Bill Bryson book
1 hour of Flip video
1 husband
2 in-laws
1 StowmarKate's Dad (via Skype)

with
1 StowmarKate's Mom
1 StowmarKate

Mix well.

Unbelievably, I didn't take any pictures. We have some Flip videos, but that's it!

Bellringing (tower-spotting?)

I really do mean for this to be more than a once-a-week blog. Work has been insanely busy lately, but in a good way. It's meant that I've been sleeping insane amounts - all I want to do when I get home is eat dinner and crawl into bed!

I had an uber-productive day yesterday - we rode our bikes to the farm shop for some groceries, did 3 loads of laundry (2 of which were dried on the washing line), and then spent the afternoon on a bell outing, "tower-grabbing".

Here's a screenshot of the word document that we got. The open day started at 9am, but it was mostly local towers that I'd already rung in (or will probably ring in soon). The left two columns are the opening times, the number in the 4th column is how many bells there are, the fifth column has the map reference, and the all-important 6th column is T for Toilet. Not all churches have toilets, I have discovered.

It was my first tower-grabbing day (which is quite like trainspotting: you drive somewhere, check off the sighting/activity, and then rush off to the next place), and it was a little bit manic. People truly rush from one tower to the next, ring whatever the least-experienced band member can ring, and then leap back into the car. Madness.

Offton:

Bramford:

 

Sproughton:

Kersey (we skipped Elmsett):

 

Monks Eleigh:

 

Bildeston:

 

And, on the way home, Buxhall. I ring at Buxhall every other Tuesday, so it was nice to finish off the day at one of my home towers. Even though I had to pay £1 to ring called changes.

More blisters

On a recommendation from a friend, I read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. It is written entirely in letters and notes from the various characters to each other, which worried me a little at the beginning. I really enjoyed it, though. It reminded me a little bit of the McCall Smith set at the same time period (La's Orchestra Saves The World), and was an engrossing and reasonably quick read.

I spent all day yesterday on an outing to Norfolk with the Ladies' Guild of Change Ringers (Eastern District). I'm now officially a member (and have ordered my LG rugby shirt to prove it). It was a really fun day out: we rang at 3 towers, had a pub lunch, and even the meeting that I attended wasn't as bad as I was expecting.

This is a picture of Brooke church - it had a somewhat exciting circular tower with not a lot of room for people to stand. The tenor rope seemed to be suspended over the stairwell when we first arrived, and then I realised that there was a platform that folded down over the stairs for the tenor ringer to stand on. I rang the tenor for some Stedman doubles, and standing on the little platform, seemingly suspended in midair, gave me seriously wobbly knees. I was only about 4 feet off the ground (and only in one direction - I was level with the floor on 3 sides), but it was enough for me. The ringers said they've never had anyone fall off, which I guess is good!

We left before the 4th tower to come back to Suffolk to ring a quarter peal in Woolpit. It went really well until about 35 minutes in, when my blister decided it had had enough. It's nowhere near as bad as the last one I had, though, and we made it all the way through. I can't imagine how I'm ever going to get through a full peal (3+ hours, nonstop) if I keep getting blisters ringing quarters.

Here's another picture from Dad's scanning project - I think that's the same concentration face I make when I'm ringing bells!

Do I get to be a vampire now? How 'bout now?

I started Breaking Dawn on Wednesday morning, and finished it on Friday evening. AND I was out on Wedensday evening and didn't get any reading time. It's my favorite of the series - Bella really grows into herself and I loved the Jacob-Edward dynamic.

I found all four books to be quite cinematic - reading them was not so much "sitting on the couch/at my desk/on the bed reading" as "this is all just sort of happening in my head." It was kind of a bizarre sensation, and led to some abrupt transitions back to reality when I picked my head up from the book. "Wait, where'd the vampires go?" I think the last book that I really wanted to be IN was The Penderwicks, and before that, Harry Potter. Hmm...I'm trying to think of any grown-up books that I've wanted to be in. Possibly one of Alexander McCall Smith's Edinburgh books, but not to the same extent.

We did some weeding and general garden tidying yesterday, and I decided that the daffodils were being TOO SLOW in the front yard and we needed some color. I think these do the job! I've also put down some Blue Slug Poison Pellets of Death.

The little eco-warrior in me is v. sad about doing it, but the gardener and person who wants to actually EAT the fruits of the plants that I grow has won. The slugs were entirely evil last year, and grew to somewhat epic proportions. So, Blue Death it is...

My dad has been scanning old slides and photographs, and this is one of my favorites from the recent batch. Judging by our sizes, this picture is from the summer of 1987, taken at the Garden City pool (where my mom used to be a lifeguard).

I don't know what little Edward is plotting, but it's not good. I don't think I was plotting anything - I just look cold. And I remember that bathing suit - it went from being too big to all stretched out and droopy. It clearly traumatised 6-year-old me.

The Garden City pool was awesome - it used to have a bunch of diving boards at the deep end of the HUGE main pool, which of course have now been removed and replaced with 'safe' slides. Bah. What's fun about summer if you can't fling yourself off the 5 meter platform and be scared out of your mind (and get water up your nose)?

[Edit: I don't know what's the matter with the line spacing in these posts, but pictures seem to mess it up and I can't seem to fix it. Suggestions gladly taken.]

First flower and a little light crafting

Here is the first outdoor flower of the year (in our garden, anyway). Pardon the focus issues - I took the picture with my iPhone.

It's a dwarf daffodil, although it looks more like a yellow snowdrop in this picture. The regular daffs are very nearly open and the tulips have started popping up through the dirt. WOOT!

I have some crafting to report. I bought a very cute, cream cable-knit turtleneck sweater from J.Crew, about 5 years ago. And had washed it in woolite a few times. Not a problem.

For some reason, I decided a few weeks ago to wash it in woolite using the cold, delicates cycle in the washing machine. BAD idea. The sweater didn't shrink as much as if I'd put it in the dryer, but it was definitely too small. And it was a little short to begin with. Result: unwearable.

It doesn't look so bad in this picture, but the pillow form is pretty small. And my torso is kind of long. And my muffin-top does NOT benefit from short sweaters.

So, before:

And, after!

The button is wooden, which I really like, and since my sewing machine (kick-ass antique Singer Featherweight) doesn't do zig-zag, there's no buttonhole. It's all just sewn together. I can clip the threads and re-sew the button if I need to (hand) wash the sweater-pillow.