Gulp...a real quilt

OK, so I've made quilts before. Gabi has two of them: a big one and this stroller one. But every time I've made a quilt, it's been more of a "make it up as I go along" exercise than an actual quilt. And I've never bound a quilt before.

In a moment of insanity, I've joined Randi's On the Road To Spring quilt-along on her blog,i have to say.

So, yesterday I went to Bury (well, we all went to Bury) and I went to Mill House fabric to buy my 10 1/3-yard pieces. And the batting (which was SO expensive). I like my fabrics, although the selection wasn't great. They weren't busy, either. I definitely got the sense that pulling ALL the fabrics I was interested in off the shelf was NOT the done thing, from the employees and other customers. And that they were doing me a favor by letting me shop there. Sorry, guys - I'm dropping rather a large amount of money in your store - I can move the fabrics around if I want to. I'll put them all back, I promise. The whole thing made me wish that I still lived a subway-ride away from purlpatchwork in Soho (although it wasn't there when I lived there, and I didn't have a sewing machine then).

In any case, I started out with my off-white "background" color and two Liberty fabrics that I've been saving for something. Since I've been saving them for at least 2 years now, it's time to get moving. So they were my jumping-off point for the quilt. They're the florals on the left in both of the little pictures.

I think it's kind of neat that I found similar fabrics to both in the fabric store - I especially like the red/blue florals because the flowers are exactly the same.

Anyway, this is my "favorites" pile:

And then, at the bottom, is the whole enchilada. The creamy one right at the bottom is my "background" color. The light blue and creamy florals (same fabric, different colorway) are the backing and binding fabrics, respectively. I got enough so that I can chicken out on one or two of the other ones and use them on the front as well. I also like them enough that I'll definitely be able to think of other things to make with them. I'm a little nervous after looking at the other fabric choices in the flickr group - mine seems a little...er...scattered.

It's funny - I keep fretting randomly about each fabric in the pile (except the one on the top right and the two at the very bottom). But all of the other ones pick up colors in those, and they're all pretty much floral or floral-looking (ahem snowflakes and dragonflies - where did you come from?). And that orange-yellow is pretty intense, except then you realise that it's in the dragonflies and the center of all the flowers. See - I've been at it all day.

Onward!

Carcassonne

We have a new board game. It's called Carcassonne and is extremely entertaining. Basically, you build cities, roads, cloisters and farms, colonising them with little "meeples" along the way.


It seems to have a good mix of luck and skill, and after our initial "how does this work?" round, John and I were pretty psyched to play several more rounds. I think once James gets the hang of it, he'll enjoy it, too.


Look, meeples! (The one in the foreground isn't dead, he's a farmer. He actually turned out to be John's game-winning farmer. BAH.)

While I've been knitting muchly, John has built this little engine thingy. It needs to be painted and have a little more glue-time, but I think it's really cute.

By the way, most of my pictures are now being taken with the new Canon EOS 500D from John's brother. It's an AWESOME camera and is really fun to play with. I've found it a bit more intuitive than our older 20D, and all the pictures seem to be much sharper.

Not a paper cup

The coffee at work is legendary. And not in a good way. Since we have a really nice coffee maker at home, we make enough in the mornings for two travel mugs worth. It's SO nice to sit down at my desk and get started on my day with a cup of coffee. We have two Aladdin (discontinued) "I'm not a paper cup" travel mugs. They keep the coffee warm for about 2 hours, even with the sipping lid open. And they don't leak, which better than all the other travel mugs I've used. If you want to keep coffee hot for hours and hours, get a Thermos. If you just want it to be hot when you get to work (our commute is about 25 minutes), I'd recommend these.

I fully admit that we look rather dorky carrying matching mugs in to the office in the mornings, but it's worth it. Oh, and woe betide you if you forget to bring your mug home at the end of the day. It has knock-on effects through the following morning. Ack.

My other most recent work-atmosphere improvement has been The Wailin Jennys. My dad found them while on his Kate Rusby Pandora channel, and they seem to me to be a cross between KR, the Indigo Girls, and the Sirens (a Colby acapella group). LOVE them.

I finished reading Megan Whalen Turner's first novel, "The Thief," this week. It was very much in the same style as Graceling, and I really liked the descriptions - she conveys the moods of the settings and the characters very well. I think I may have read it too close on the heels of Graceling and Eragon- I found myself overlapping characters a bit. Definitely worth a read if you like YA fantasy novels. I've put it on James' bedside table to see if we can bring him on a little bit from Darren Shan.

I've started my book club book which required some deep breathing after the first few sentences. It's The Angel's Game, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon.

A writer never forgets the fist time he accepted a few coins or a word of praise in exchange for a story.

Panic set in. I. Hate. Books. About. Writers.

Write what you know, and all that, but don't write about writing, please. I did manage to regain my composure and I'm now about 20 pages in.

Chili

We made a delish dinner last night - it's from the most recent BBC Good Food, so it's not on their website. It was a Black Bean Chili from a feature on Mexican food by the American food writer Jennifer Joyce. It's funny - Mexican food is essentially its own food group in the US, and it's really not something that's particularly huge over here. When you think about it geographically, it makes sense, but I still miss my quesadillas.

Anyway, this recipe was SO easy and really tasty. My normal veggie chili recipe involves kidney beans (which I always think are a little dry and mealy) and bell peppers (which I'm not a huge fan of). This is MUCH better (and would be really tasty with some leftover chicken or ground beef, too).

The only thing we did differently was to use smoked paprika with a little chili powder instead of sweet pimenton, which made it rather fiery but very tasty. Oh, and I didn't have ground cumin so I used whole cumin and some ground coriander (and dumped some dried coriander leaf in towards the end). We served it with spring onions and sour cream, and I'm still thinking about how yummy it was.

We had a few apples in the fridge that were threatening to go brown, so I made this recipe for apple streusel bars again. Double the apples, halve the icing, leave everything else the same. Tastes somewhere between apple pie, Bakewell tart, and a meltaway. It can be used extremely effectively as a bribe.

Because we had leftover spring onions from last night's chili, John's breakfast consisted of fried eggs with sauteed mushrooms, green chillies, and spring onions. (James and I ate up some stale bread by making french toast). As much as I love french toast, I was jealous. He was nice enough to give me a bite, and it tasted fabulous.

I finished another book last night: Janice Y.K. Lee's The Piano Teacher. I don't remember where my recommendation came from - it might have been on one of my Waterstones Evernote binges. (I go to Waterstones, decide which books in the bestsellers look good, write them down on Evernote, and order them from the library. Before you howl in horror at not supporting bookstores, we buy lots of books for James and John there and I do occasionally cave and BUY a book. We don't have any good independents near us, so I don't feel bad for not supporting them.)

In any event, I should have been more wary. It was not only a "Richard and Judy Summer Read" (Run away! Far, far away!), but it was billed as "This year's Atonement" on the cover. I HATED Atonement. In fairness, I didn't hate The Piano Teacher as much as I hated Atonement. It's set in colonial Hong Kong in the 1950s, with flashbacks to the 1940s. I thought the setting was very interesting, and the interactions between the various colonial powers and the native population were well-described, but I didn't think that the book really went anywhere. Then, at the back, there was an interview with Lee, where she said that she didn't really know where the book was going to go when she was writing it. Really? Couldn't have guessed.

I'll just have to do some more reading, since it's snowing again!

Best Christmas Present Ever

My dad is hard to shop for. My mom is easy: I either ask her what she wants and she tells me, or I go into a store and think "I really LIKE that" and buy one for her. Works every time.

With my dad, though, it's different. If he sees something he wants or needs, generally he buys it for himself. If you ask him what he wants, he says "nothing". His birthday is 2 days after Christmas, and most of his hobbies are summer-related.

This means that every year, I have to think of not one, but two presents for him, to be delivered within 2 days of each other. It cannot be one present (there are laws against that). It cannot be something he already has.

It has to be something he didn't know he always wanted.

This year, I think I struck gold. His birthday present was the exciting but not off-the-charts Gorillapod (able to combine his love of photography, the self-timer on his camera, and riding his bike). However, his Christmas present is what I would consider to be an all-time-greatest-present.

His No. 1 [Note: I've just discovered that my otherwise entirely flawless and lovely MacBook Pro doesn't have a "number sign" or "hash key" button. You know, the little thing that looks like a tic-tac-toe board. WTF, Apple?]. Ahem.

His "number 1" favorite hobby is photography. His current favorite hobby is needlepoint. What to do? Combine the two!

Picture of a RI lighthouse, taken by Dad:

Lovely, you say. It's a lighthouse, you say.

Ahhh, but wait.

Many struggles with a shall-remain-nameless Rhode Island purveyor of needlepoint and things over a 3-week period pre-Christmas, helped along by my ever-heroic mom, followed by a powerpoint presentation to be "opened" on Christmas morning, followed by a few more transatlantic emails.

After all of that, you get this. That's right, a custom, hand-painted needlepoint pattern (including the color-matched yarn) of a picture that my dad took. I am awesome. And he's worth it.

Wait, didn't you get that from the library today?

After giving up on New York, I decided to treat myself to an Eva Ibbotson book that I noticed in the YA section of the library when James and I were looking for something for him to read last week. I read Journey To the River Sea after a recommendation from Mrs WJ a while ago, and really liked it. Spunky, adventurous heroines all 'round.

The book turned out to be The Dragonfly Pool, about a British girl during World War II who goes to boarding school. I, um, liked it so much I read it in one sitting. All 397 pages of it. James came downstairs after brushing his teeth, and said, "wait, isn't that the book that you picked up from the library this afternoon?"

Why, yes, it is. And I can take it back to the library in the morning!

Right, that's it. I've officially given up on Edward Rutherfurd's New York. I'm finding it about as forgettable as London, I don't really care what happens to the characters, I've read 450 pages, and I'm not even half way through. Back to the library! I think part of the problem is that it jumps around in time quite a bit - every time I feel like I'm getting to know a character (rather than their grandfather, with whom I've just spent the last 12 chapters), it jumps forward again. I'm also not very good at skimming books - I either have to read every word or just not bother.

We braved the sleet and went to Ipswich for dinner last night, to Kwan Thai. It was pretty tasty Thai food, although not quite as good as Nipa, in Bayswater (London). It was much closer, though!

Happy 2010!

We've started the new year with SNOW!! It's not as epic a snowfall as the one we had two weeks ago, but it'll do.

The sm. boy gave me the latest Hairy Bikers cookbook, from the series that John and I were completely addicted to. I'm definitely going to have to make their Suffolk pork recipe, and at least drool over some of the more complicated ones, if I don't end up making them.

In other book news, according to the New York Times, Scholastic are reviving The Baby-Sitters Club books and Ann M. Martin is writing a prequel. I was OBSESSED with the books as a kid - I started reading them when I was about 7 (at which point 12-year-olds were impossibly mature and fascinating), and read them until well into middle school. It was pretty much where all of my babysitting money went, at least for the first few years.

I always thought I was really cool because my collection included both the English and American editions of the books (not duplicates, but I filled in gaps in my collections with whichever edition I was closest to at the time). I think the books are still with my parents, in a box somewhere, or I may have given them away. They drove my parents a little bit crazy - I'd drop an hour or two's worth of babysitting money on a book, only to then read it in one three-hour sitting. I used to re-read the books constantly, too.

I think I might have to splurge on the new book, although I'm not sure I can bear to expand my BSC collection to include a hardcover book. I DID have The Baby-Sitters Club guide to babysitting, which I used to bring with me on all of my jobs. Just in case.

The curse is broken

The women in my family have a problem. It's Yorkshire puddings. They either come out as pancakes, crumpets, or fail completely.

I, however, with a little help from Good Food, successfully made Toad In The Hole (sausages in Yorkshire pudding for the trans-atlantics in attendance) this evening. And, my yorkshires were pronounced "almost as good as mum's and grandma's" by the resident sm. boy.

I'm going to try not to let the success go to my head. I would, though, like to take this opportunity to pronounce the Hile Yorkshire Pudding Curse broken. James did mention that it might have something to do with the fact that I married into a non-cursed family. We'll have to see.

Before the Y.P. extravaganza, we all went to see Avatar in 3D. I was a little worried about it - I tend to get headaches with 3D (and 3D glasses), but after the first somewhat queasy-making hour, I really enjoyed it. A total popcorn movie (a little romance, a little blowing up, a little moralistic preachyness), and lots of fun.

Wintry Pastimes

[Updated: I misspelled "pastimes" the first time around. UGH.]

I have a little problem. I'm addicted to Ravelry. It doesn't seem to matter whether or not I need whatever project it is that I'm lusting after at that particular moment. Like these really awesome fingerless gloves. Handy, right?

Right?

Anyone there?

Harumph. I like them. Even though they don't keep my fingers warm.

I've decided that my next project, since I, um, really need another hat, is to make a hat with a snowflake on it. Colorwork. ACK. Which not only means that I need to buy some more yarn (poor me), but that I need to figure out how the whole thing works. Which led me to watch this video on Continental knitting. I've watched it and rewound several times, but I don't think I'm quite there yet.

It's kind of like when I tried snowboarding on a ski vacation once - I'm a relatively good skier and was really irritated by the fact that I was doing the same thing (i.e. getting down a snowy mountainside), but slowly and mostly on my ass. Not that Continental knitting has anything to do with my ass. Ahem.

I have a somewhat alarming pile of books at the moment (a result of the feast-or-famine whims of the Suffolk Library queuing system). I'm part of the way into Edward Rutherfurd's New York, which I'm finding about the same as London. It's relatively compelling, mostly because it's about a place I know so well (and New Ro has the odd cameo...hooray for the Huguenots!).

I'm going to finish it, but I'm not enjoying it anywhere near as much as "the best book I've read recently," Graceling. That link is actually to the author's blog, where she recommended "The Thief." A mark of how much I liked Graceling: since the Suffolk Libraries didn't own a copy of The Thief, I had to...shudder...BUY a copy on Amazon.co.uk. I'll recover, eventually. Although I might hold Kristin Cashore personally responsible if I don't like it.

I also read the latest Chris Bohjalian, The Double Bind. Not as good as Midwives (his most famous Oprah-book), but better than some of his more recent books. I quite liked the tie-in with The Great Gatsby, despite not really enjoying Gatsby all that much when I read it. AND he's one of two famous Vermont author that I've actually met. (The other is Jodi Picoult.) My college boyfriend's parents live near Burlington, VT, and are friendly with his family. When I spent Christmas at their house my senior year, he was invited to a party that they threw and I met him. V. nice but talks like he writes, which was a little startling.

I guess rather than feeling guilty for spending all of my time reading and knitting, I should embrace the fact that it's northern Europe in the winter and it's COLD and DARK outside. WOOT!

Boxing Day!

I love Boxing Day. It's a whole day designed just to recover from the day before. There's none of the New Year's Day pressure to do something virtuous or productive.

I can take pictures of our Christmas ornaments (the Kate Rusby one and our bicycling married couple one that my aunt gave us a few years ago).

I can also take pictures of the sole muffin left over from this morning's breakfast. Apple muffins, found on the interwebs, here at AllRecipes.

We made Christmas dinner yesterday - we had a farm shop goose, Delia Smith's roast winter veggies with herbs, a somewhat "interpreted" version of Good Food's sausage, sage and onion stuffing (I added mushrooms), roast potatoes, and sprouts with bacon. Mmmmm. We've made goose stock and have various yummy leftovers that will be consumed shortly.

I finished reading The Girl Who Played With Fire this week, and it was as good as the first one. I'm trying to ration myself with the third one (since the author is dead and there won't be any more), but I think the epic library reservations queue that I'm now at the end of should help.

A Bury Nice Afternoon

I'm obsessed with Ravelry. Not only can I see all the fab things that everyone else is knitting, I get instant feedback on the stuff I'm knitting. Suddenly, knitting has gone from a solitary endeavour to a team sport. WOOT.

So, I've finished the fleece nugget scarf, I am about to start in on another one as a Christmas present, I'm working on a new sweater, and I've just bought some wool to make fingerless mittens. Because, really, what I need are fingerless mittens.

The wool is Debbie Bliss Rialto Aran and I love the color. It's going to look great with my light brown coat.

While I was having the wool photo-shoot this morning, I decided that my Kate & Doris mug needed a little love. There it is, filled with coffee. MmmmSundaymornings.

Yesterday, John and I went to Bury in the late afternoon, to go for a walk in the Abbey Gardens. The winter light on the trees was really pretty - I hate the really short afternoons but I love the flat light for taking pictures. After sufficient photography, I spent far more time and money than I should have in Wibbling Wools (I think I may just set up a tent in the corner of the shop and live there - nobody would notice me).

Then, we went out to an early dinner at Chez Gerard (which was really tasty), and braved the screaming teenagers to see New Moon. I, embarrassingly, really enjoyed the movie. John...well...um...yeah. Not so much.

Reviews: Christmas Music

Having been liberated from a previous colleague's taste in schmaltzy pop Christmas music (Do They Know It's Christmas? How could they miss it? You've played the song 12 times so far today!), my iPod has been keeping things festive in my office. Please note: I'm NOT inflicting this on anyone else.

Kate Rusby: Sweet Bells
The peerless Ms. Rusby (whose songs fit v. nicely within my range) sings traditional Yorkshire folk arrangements of the Christmas carols you know (and some you don't). It always reminds me a little of the Sutton Manor versions of Christmas carols, which must seem very strange to outsiders...

Tori Amos: Midwinter Graces
A bunch of really traditional Christmas songs, Tori-fied. She kicks butt. And pianos. The album does rather over-use chimes to invoke church bells, but I'll forgive her.

Benjamin Britten: Ceremony of Carols
Way funkier than people give him credit for. We're rehearsing this for our concert on the 20th (shameless plug!), and I really love it. We're doing the SATB version with organ or piano (I can't remember which), but the recording I have is of the SSAA version, and I have to say I prefer it. My favorite movement: "This Little Babe". The lyrics start out seemingly harmless, but it's sung in a crazy fugue and comes across as complete chaos.

Sesame Street Christmas
We've been through this. I love it. Everyone else thinks I'm crazy. I'm ok with that.

The best camera...

...is the one you have with you. Apparently I'm not alone in the fact that my Casio camera's battery has given up the ghost. I inadvertently let it run down, and it now refuses to charge. Thankfully, Amazon has a zillion in stock (although I'm going to stay far away from the Casio brand one).

We were in the Abbey Gardens just before dusk, so my iPhone had the luxury of taking this picture.

Cross-genre protagonists

I read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo a few weeks ago. I was a bit wary - there's been so much hype. It took me about 100 pages to get into it, but once I sorted out who the characters were, I was hooked. It's a little more violent than books I usually read, but it had a great sense of the "whodunnit".

I'm almost finished with Graceling, recommended by C (as part of the awesomeness that is Recommendation Sunday), and I was startled by how similar the protagonists are. Both are very strong young women (who don't think of themselves as strong), who have been ostracised because of they way they are. Neither of them are inclined to trust men (or anyone, really).

Anyway, both books are really good. I'm trying to ration Graceling because I'm almost done and I love it. I've just checked the author's website (linked from the title above) and there's a prequel already published and a sequel in the works. WOOT.

The picture is a gratuitous bell-ringing picture (Cotton, last February)...just because. It's cold and wintry.

We had Stowmarket Thanksgiving last weekend. It was a definite success - the turkey from the butcher (pre-ordered in August, of course) was v. tasty, and all of the sides were both yummy and hot! I was inspired by the NYT stuffing "muffin" suggestion: I made my mom's (NYT circa 1970s) stuffing recipe, John used the blender to mix it together, then we mashed it into a muffin tin and baked it with the rest of the sides after the turkey came out. They were really tasty - crispy on the outside and mushy in the middle.

Because it's cold outside, the knitting has taken hold. I went to Wibbling Wools yesterday and impulse-bought some Rico Pompon yarn. It's a synthetic yarn: cording puncutated by little nuggets of fleece. And when you follow the pattern on the inside of the ball band, makes a scarf like this:

It's kind of fiddly at first, but the result is SO soft. I'm psyched for the end result.

I also had picked out a pattern a few weeks ago for another sweater, and I decided on some yarn. The original pattern is for a now-discontinued mohair yarn. According to the knitting/pattern guru at the store, I can substitute an aran. So I did. It's kind of hard to tell, but it's a charcoal-grey alpaca cotton blend with little flecks of light grey in it. Going to be v. warm and lovely. Once I finish the fleece-nugget scarf, that is.

Inconspicuous

I sang in the Bach Choir concert in Bury last night. (Come to our next one! Saturday 19th December, Christmas Music, Lavenham)

Because we live 20 minutes away (not including parking the car in Bury), the logistics of coming home between the afternoon rehearsal and the evening concert tend to be sort of complicated. We stayed in Bury and went out to supper with some friends. FWIW, it's the third time I've been to La Tasca, which is inevitably empty, and the service and food were just as bad as last time (and the time before). Consider yourselves warned.

Anyway, because we didn't go home after the rehearsal, I needed to change into my concert outfit between dinner and the performance. Mostly it involved taking my jeans off and putting a dress on - not too complicated. There's not really anywhere good to change in the Cathedral, so I decided to get dressed in the car. Which was parked in the Angel Hill parking lot in the center of town. It was dark and rainy, so there weren't too many people around, and the back windows of our car are tinted. Totally cool.

Except that right after I'd taken my jeans off, as I was wrestling with the dress to put it on, I sat on the car keys. And somehow hit the "panic" button. Which made the alarm go off. Flashing lights, honking horn, the whole thing. Oops.

Finally, Owls!

It's now officially cold enough to start wearing wool again. It was freezing at bells on Tuesday. I'd forgotten how cold it gets in churches when you're just standing around.

I wanted to wear my Owls sweater last weekend, but when I tried it on, John and I agreed that it smelled a little...er...sheep-y. It's untreated wool, so it's not really surprising. I soaked and blocked it, and it's ready to go. Thanks to John for the pictures (and Andrew for the camera).

It's strange - I was looking for the tag when I was putting it on, and then remembered that there isn't one. Mostly because I started out with some wool and ended up with a sweater. WOOT.

It was one of the fastest projects I've done, considering how cool the outcome is. I'm tempted to make the same sweater again in a different color, possibly without the owls. There are some others on Ravelry that are pretty tempting, though.

Now we just have to figure out how to get me to STOP wearing it - it's warm and cosy and I'm obsessed with it.

Other things I'm obsessed with at the moment:

- Cooking with apples. Going to try this recipe with the sm. boy for the inlaws (coming for coffee tomorrow)
- Eragon. I'm on the third one and am gutted that there aren't any more (yet).
- Trying to find a tv cabinet that I don't hate. They're all either ugly, too big, too expensive, or just plain wrong. I've come close with this one, though. I think it might still be a bit big. One day I'll find it.

Lost again

I know it's a busy week when I get behind on my rss feeds. And when it took me nearly a full day to notice that the Yankees had won the World Series.

We rented Lost (season 5) last Sunday, and have been watching it in our spare time, which has been surprisingly infrequent. It's definitely a good way to decompress from work, though. You can't think about the Lost plot and have room in your brain for anything else!

I think it's quite entertaining that when I took an improv class in college, one of the first rules they taught us was "Never put yourself on a desert island. You immediately eliminate most of your dialogue and prop options." Apparently not, if you're JJ Abrams.


-- Posted from my iPhone

New Scarf

I can't remember who pointed me to the link, but I'm really psyched to have started in on the Palindrome scarf by Kristin at Silver's Place. I'm knitting it using the leftover skeins of Berroco Ultra Alpaca that I bought in Rhode Island two years ago. (I finished the sweater and decided it was too big for me, so my mom has it as a dog-walking sweater.)

I'm still trying to pick a pattern for my next sweater project, and there are a few on Ravelry that are strong contenders, but in the meantime, it's knitting season! I think this is going to be really good on the chilly days at work - it'll look great with a white shirt.

I started it while watching Coraline with the boys last night - it was spooky, a little trippy, and quite close to the book. We all really liked it.

Oink?

Um, yeah. Since I wasn't busy at work or anything, I caught Swine Flu. Too much time spent licking pigs?

I've never had flu before - it was exceedingly unpleasant. The only upside is that I didn't eat for nearly a week, so my skinny jeans fit. Back to eating now, though, and still feeling pretty tired. I'm thrilled not to have a fever anymore, too.

A few weeks ago, John's brother gave us a new digital camera (Christmas/Birthday presents for the next...um...forever? Thanks, Andrew!) This is from the inaugural photo shoot, the night before I got sick. John thinks I look great, I think I look...tired. Nice camera, though! And lots more pictures to come once I leave the house, at some point in the next few days.

Aaand she's back!

Work has been a zoo. All I've wanted to do after getting home every day is collapse in a heap on the couch with a cup if tea and a book.

As a result, I've been doing quite a bit of reading. I finished Wuthering Heights, and while I didn't enjoy it, I'm glad to have read it.

I struggled through The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, a pseudo-biography of a slave boy in revolutionary Boston. It was interesting and well-written, but not my cup of tea.

Next up, The Lost Symbol, Dan Brown's latest caper. It was a birthday present from my brother, and I enjoyed every breathless minute of it. All very silly, though. I think the NYTimes reviewer had it when the said it was hackneyed, mellodramatic, and overwrought, but that she loved every minute.

In other birthday news, John and I have new couches, from SofaSofa. We've had them for about 3 weeks and sofa-sogood. They are beige, which makes the whole living room seem a hundred times lighter. But they were crying out for some color.




As my super awesome parents gave me a new sewing machine for my birthday, I had to get sewing.

Result:


Woot!

Rrufus' last ball

My parents' dog died two weeks ago - I've been avoiding this post because it wrecks me if I think about it too much.

His favorite things (in order):
1. my parents
2. balls (preferably squeaky)
3. butter
4. walks
5. sleeping on my parents' bed (with his paws in the air, mouth open, snoring)
6. car rides
7. swimming
8. his best buddies Fred (human) and Abigail (canine)
9. my brother and me
10. snow


Rrufus looking dignified:

And slightly less so:

I'm a Junior Foodie

First foodie credential: Sylvia Schur, who died last week (the link is to her obit in the NYT), lived across the street and gave my parents a high chair when I was born. Her second husband (before they were married) gave me and my brother a set of wind-up sushi toys.

Second foodie credential: I've been 'putting up' food in the last few weeks. Plum jam a few weeks ago and oven-dried tomatoes last week (which we're going to finish eating long before winter). The tomatoes were from the garden and were quite tasty before they were roasted. But after? With some salt and olive oil in the oven at 80 degrees C for 3 1/2 hours? Really awesome.

Third foodie credential: John and I have been watching the Hairy Bikers quite a bit lately, and in one of the recent recipes they made a meat pie. It looked REALLY tasty, and John has been demanding Pork Pie since then. So we asked the Good Food website what to do, and it told us to make Gordon Ramsay's Pork & Ham Pie. From scratch. With pork mince, sausagemeat, ham, sage, eggs, and pastry made with lard. Yes, lard. Gordon's picture:

And our picture:

 

We don't know what it looks like inside yet (or how it tastes), but it sure smells good. We will be taking it to the choir picnic today and thoroughly tasting it. From this angle, you can't see the decorations on the top very well, but they are an "H", and a pig, made out of pastry. Swoon.

Junior Foodie credentials: complete. Please proceed to next level. Involving foams.

Maybe I'll blog more...

In the hopes of blogging more than once a week, I've downloaded a blogging app for my iPhone. Which I'm still obsessed with, by the way, even though I've had it for almost a year.

Both bells and choir are back in full swing, and the September rush is definitely on at work. As a result my downtime has mostly consisted of watching The Hairy Bikers' Tour of Britain with John on iPlayer, and then going to bed early. The HBs are very entertaining, and our favorite episode so far is Kent. Mostly because of their hilarious antics in the kitchen with an extremely skillful chef. We liked the Suffolk episode, too, of course, but mostly for the "we've been there!" aspect of it. Yum.

-- Posted from my iPhone

I've been cooking again. I made a salmon, dill & potato tart, from BBC Good Food. It was more of a quiche, really, since I mixed the recipe with a quiche one (and added milk and eggs). It was really yummy - John doesn't normally like quiche and even he had some. I'm now trying to convince him that what he wants is for me to make MORE quiche...

I've been ringing lots of bells (and have my very own Buxhall shirt to add to my Trinity shirt). This was Alison's first quarter peal, at Tostock. I nearly lost the plot in the middle, but thankfully Lesley was paying attention and put me back in the right spot. I always feel bad swearing in church...

Oh, and if you haven't already, read the article from this weekend's NYT Arts Section about the bellringers at Trinity Church. I KNOW them!! The Ringing Master (interviewed in the "multimedia slideshow" attached to the article) was the one who kept me right during a course of Bob Minor. WOOT!!

Sometimes I forget that I don't live in a city

In case I ever forget that I live out in the countryside, things like this bring me right back to earth.

We have some friends who live on a farm - they have a cosy farmhouse, a veg patch that makes me drool, and a zillion chickens. I think I'd miss being able to walk to the library and the station, though.

And when we parked our car in the farm yard across from their house, the combine harvester was sitting there. I'd seen them in the fields and on the road, but never up close. They're enormous!

And, this one was special: I got to stand on it!

In other rural pursuits, we bought some plums last weekend, and I made my first jam. It's not going to win any prizes (and I've come to the conclusion that I don't really like plum jam), but it's a start. I need a better funnel, though - there were a few dribbles of jam that ended up on the counter rather than in the jars.

Oh, and we washed our sheets and discovered a stowaway at the end of the wash. Oops. At least he's clean now. Looking a bit reproachful, though, don't you think?

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.