c l u t c h

Family.

Haul.

e g g

I recently finished these two sunny yellow knitting projects. The cardigan I started 3 years ago, but it's taken me this long to have the patience to sew it up. I'm surprised at how I've become so much less ambitious about my knitting without even noticing it. Now I try to minimise all sewing up processes, and also choose very plain and simple shapes. See here my new colour block sweater, which doubles as a fried egg fancy dress costume.

 Then compare the 1940s-inspired cardigan from an old Rowan pattern, which I've in fact made once before in a soft brown with bright blue trim. I do love them both, but they are intricate and time-consuming and this has rather gone by the wayside in my knitting approaches. I think maybe fewer projects with more business in them might be a good shift for a while. To that end, I visited a lovely new knitting shop in Cardiff recently, and I have some ideas that were inspired by the patterns I saw there.

In the mean time, I'm enjoying these beautiful yellow shades, especially for Easter/Passover weekend.

o a t c a k e s

As I start to feel so much better in my head, thanks to having a little less to worry and swirl around in it, I've also this week wanted to get stuck back in on eating healthily and doing some cooking. I've been juicing away, cooking with quinoa (using it up from the cupboard, not to be bought again given concerns over supplies -- pity, as it's very nice), and frying trout. Today I decided to bake some oatcakes, to have an alternative to soup or sandwiches for packed lunches.

First problem encountered -- when I reached for the big bag of oats from the kitchen cupboard, it was an almost empty bag of oats, with a nibble hole and many mouse droppings. Or droplets. They're very tiny. I'm impressed at how many oats they've managed to get through. Doglet and I will be looking out for an army of mice dressed in kilts and white vests, flexing their muscles as they limber up to throw their shotputs. Clever them.

After that it was pretty plain sailing. I used this recipe from Orangette. It's very nice, although perhaps actually a little too indulgent. It involves butter, yoghurt and sugar -- they're very tasty and moreish. But perhaps not so healthy. They're more of a treat oatcake, and not unlike those by Duchy Originals. I think I would like them also a touch more crunchy. I might go back and try the super austere ones in Delia's original cookery course next time, which I remember as having little more than oatmeal and water. They're surprisingly comforting, in a very plain scrubbed face and clean apron kind of way.

Anyway, these are nice for now, and I'm making up some hummous to go on them for lunch tomorrow.  Trying out roasting the garlic to minimise the pungency...

w e e k e n d s

 *1

*2

As part of a concerted effort to reclaim weekends back from work, we went to the Hunterian Art Gallery last Saturday to see the 'This Unrivalled Collection' exhibition, which looked back to Captain John Laskey's first catalogue of the museum in 1813. The rooms were lovely and quiet, beautifully lit with dark red walls and the original early-nineteenth century cases. A motley collection of things with my favourites being some of the old typefaces, coins, and natural history illustrations. Less lovely but still grimly fascinating was the stuffed sloth and the enormous clam shell, that made me feel queasy about what the clam must have looked like (a couple of feet across).

On Sunday we went to see the new Ken Loach film, 'Spirit of 45', which is a documentary about the beginning of the welfare state, NHS, and nationalisation of various industries. Since the last part had to be about the systematic dismantling of such things, it was very depressing. Some of the earlier footage was great though, the voices beautiful and so were the ideas of an economy driven not by profit but by collective need. I won't say more because the gulf is so wide between that and George Osborne and it's just too painful to contemplate. But it was a warm film; a populist variation on the Luke Fowler film. [Still from the film comes from here.]

*1 Mask brought back [looted] by Captain Cook from the Society Islands, Tahiti c.1770
*2 Morpho butterfly from William Hunter collection, c. 1780

f l o r a

Introducing some cheer to the front room, and small glimpses of it in the garden too.

big fat yellow attack

I love ticking things off lists, and I like feeling as though I can stick at something until it's just done. I get this partly from my mum, who always had lists, and my grand-dad, who was famous for making strips out of sliced up tea-bag boxes and keeping them in his breast pocket in case anyone needed to draw one up. Ta-da! He could hand you a fresh strip and a pencil and you could start getting somewhere. I love the feeling of drawing a neat inked line through a listed task. In the drawing up of a list it's the happy peace of having things done that I look forward to -- the sleep of the just.

It happens that I've had a big task on my to do list for a couple of years now. And it's one that contains lots of what I care most about, and one that I've assembled piles of work for. But... it turns out that drawing the line through the task isn't always possible. I've always known it isn't easy, but this week I'm learning to accept that it isn't always even possible. I've put the task aside, backed down, bowed out, thrown the in the towel -- call it whatever, I'm not putting a line through it.

This makes me sad and disappointed. But it's also given me a better perspective. I feel like I'm looking outside again. Feeling a bit freer and hopefully healthier. I feel a bit more motivated. And although I'm suffering a bit from feeling that I can't sleep the sleep of the just, it's true that I did sleep last night, which is a lot better than I've been managing for the last few months.

Not sure what happens next, but I'll wait and see. I have some plans for shorter pieces of writing, and I want to have a proper holiday. And do some pleasure reading, and get out my lovely new piece of sewing machine kit (a very kind birthday present from my mum). And remember that we only live once, and that I'd like my health back properly. Work needs to be put back into its work-shaped box, instead of metastasising all over my life, and other things need to be enjoyed without guilt. What was I thinking?!

p.s. my lomography post was laughably over confident -- turns out I'm worse than ever with the camera. The film I was supposed to be collecting 'wasn't worth developing' according to the people at snappy snaps... And the memory card reader is still buggered.

l o m o

This has been one of those weeks where things regularly go wrong, or are challenging. When you feel that things are somehow just crossed in the stars. Things don't fit, or drop down drains, or never end. And now my computer has decided to stop being able to read the memory card from my camera. Sigh. I have been so tired this week, I've actually felt jet lagged.

So without my photos accessible, I've resorted to posting these images that I (finally, after two and a half years) had developed from my Diana camera. Inspired (and helped on the phone) by dear friend, Sara, I have, at last, got the hang of it. The photos are pretty terrible, it has to be admitted. I have an uncanny ability to get things out of focus. And out of frame. And badly composed. Etc. Etc. But these are a few that aren't quite so bad, or perhaps more accurately, which I find have some charm despite being as bad as all the others. I'm picking up another film tomorrow, so maybe I will have got more of a grip. But quite possibly not. Still, these are the pictures from Autumn 2010. 

I like the double exposure ones, especially where doglet's co-carer appears decked with flowers. The strange pink and cream patterns are cats dancing on a tablecloth. And there's something I like very much about the murky light around the lovely minotaur. Let's see how things develop..

s u n

We've been feeling cautiously optimistic here as the sun has come out to play alarmingly regularly. Walks by the river and by Loch Lomond have been gorgeous. How long will it last?