a short hiatus

spelt wrong no doubt but I'm being nagged to drink coffee which I don't like, by the FB; and the Count is complaining about the terrible service, so I don't have time to go and do a spell check.

Tomorrow that NoBloPoMo begins which is why I've not written in 2 weeks. That's not to say I'll have much to say everyday for a month but you never know.

see you tomorrow

I can see a rainbow

The FB and I have been playing with colour a lot this week. We've taken out my shoebox of material squares and laid out lots of quilt patterns. These are the squares that I bought last December and which had to be replaced as the original lot went missing in the post, and they are still waiting to be used. It took laying each one out to see how gorgeously sumptuous some of them are, and conversely how blah others seem, but I suspect that should a quilt ever come into being the dull will definately be lifted by the beautiful.
But no quilt can be made until the marathon cross stitch that is the Wandsworth Common photo is completed and people, that is going to take some time. It is, I calculated, 240,000 stitches in total, and 10 months after starting I have done a mere 17,000..... I think the quilt may have to wait until my next lifetime!
But that brings me to the redecoration that went on here last night. I wanted to find a little tracker so I could monitor how much of the xstitch had been done (7% at the last count) and put it up here as a way of making sure I keep going. I found some out there, but I simply couldn't make them work on my old blog design and well here we are. The html tweaking continues as I try to work out what each bit means by trial and error. The colours are more restrained than I would like but fit in perfectly with the cooling down of the weather as we move slowly but surely into Winter.

Doesn't time fly?

One year ago MrV bought me "Twelve", a book of Tuscan cooking by Tessa Kiros for a belated birthday present. Some of the recipes have a strange symbol above them but there is nothing in the book to say if it means anything so I googled the author and found PeaSoup's blog. I was hooked instantly. The idea of someone with three boys who had enough time to do all the baking, knitting and creating she does, along side the photos of her home was the impetus I needed to start a blog of my own. And here we are, one year on. A year older, a second son, a new home and lots of new friends from all over the world. I wonder what the next year will bring.

Up, down and bleugh

We've had a busy week

Wednesday - met MrsT and the adorable LittleMissT for a walk in the park. LittleMissT and the Count appeared to be quite enamoured of each other, and the FB talked MrsT's ear off
Thursday - train to Edinburgh. Was supposed to have dinner with my sis but she, her hubbie and neiceA had a stomachbug
Friday - got haircut, saw a friend for lunch, went to the Museum to see the Millenium Clock (we have to do this at least once per trip to Edin) and had dinner with MrV's family
Saturday - MrV's sister got married
Sunday - nieceE's birthday parties (one with little friends and one at home with the family)
Monday - back to the museum for another round of clock watching and then on to the Meadows to the playground
Tuesday - train to London
Wedneday - I get ill with stomach bug
Thursday - the FB gets ill with the stomach bug and it looks like MrV is coming down with it too now.

service will be resumed when health returns.

Over-the-Shoulder-Boulder-holder

In short. Am going to a wedding and need an underwired bra to lift and seperate those breasts from the jelly mass that is my abdomen. Got measured by a trained bra lady who told me that my bras are far far too big and got me the correct ones.

This morning I put the new bra on (also bought new nursing bras) only to find that she was wrong, oh so bloody wrong, and I am now in possession of three bras that make me look like I have four squished together breasts....

I love Amazon (the book meme)

From daysgoby

Total number of books owned
Approximately 2000 but they're not all mine. Some are, some are MrV's and some are books from remainder sales that MrV thought one of us would like to read.

Last book bought
Pippa Longstocking. Oh, you mean for me? Hmmm good question. I think it was "Bend the Rules Sewing" by Amy Carol, but last weekend it was my birthday and I scored a huge amount of Amazon vouchers so will be going on a bookbuying spree shortly

Last book read
I have three books on the go at present. "A Spot of Bother" by Mark Haddon (who wrote "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time)which is in the livingroom. I've only read a little of it but it looks to be a good, easy read; "Storm Front" by Jim Butcher which is in the loft/study. It is very hard to class this book. When MrV told me about it I thought it sounded a bit Douglas Adams, but having read some of it, it's not at all; and "The Story of Art" by EH Gombrich which I dip into occasionally.

Five Books that Mean a Lot to You
"And God Created the Au Pair" by Pascale Smets and Benedicte Newland. I love this book. It is a series of emails between two sisters, one in London, the other in Canada, about their children, husbands, etc etc and is a fantastic antidote to chicklit

"The Kitchen Diaries: A Year in the Kitchen" by Nigel Slater. I have a huge collection of cookbooks as I'm always on the lookout for THE cookbook, the one with mostly veggie recipes that are healthy, easy to cook, don't use a lot of weird ingredients and would appeal to a very picky four year old. OK perhaps the last bit is asking too much.

"The Story of Art" by EH Gombrich. MrV bought it for me shortly after the Count was born. We were in a little bookshop beside Wandsworth Common and I saw it. I've wanted to know more about the history of art for quite a long time, and being me, have done little about it, so MrV knowing me well bought the book. Four months in and I've reached Chapter 5...

"The Windup Bird Chronicles" by Haruki Murakami. First one of his books I read. I had never couldn't heard of him and bought it because I liked the front cover. Then once I had started reading it I stop and had to find more of his work. This was back in the 90s and there wasn't much of his stuff about. I still love his more surreal stuff and mean to host a Murakami dinner party at some point - the menu to be food mentioned in his books and accompanied by music he mentions too. Oh and the book smells fantastic.

"Charlie Brown's Super Book of Questions and Answers" by Charles M. Schulz . My aunt gave this to me for my birthday when I was about 7 or 8 and I loved it. In fact I loved it so much that when the FB was tinier than he currently is, I ordered a copy of the book off Ebay for him.

Five Books That You Just Don't Get
"Ullyses"by James Joyce. I've tried over and over and nope it just doesn't do it for me.

"Sap Rising" by AA Gill. This is probably the worst book I have ever read. I bought it because the Guardian's review was on the front cover "Do not buy this book" and I wanted to see why. I found out pretty fast why.

Shakespeare. We had to study Shakespeare at school, every year a new play apart from a few years when we did "Midsummer Night's Dream" two years in a row. There is nothing that kills a play more than a bunch of 'can't be bothered" children having to read the parts in class. Hamlet to me is a whole class of 16 year olds chanting "tobeornottobethatisthequestionwhetheritisnoblein....." you get the picture.

Chicklit. I read it but it drives me up the wall. Why do all the heroines have to be slim, beautiful but neurotic? It's junkfood for the brain really.

"Effie Briest" by Theodor Storm. Did this in German at uni and loathed it. I couldn't identify with the main protagonist and frankly after a few pages, wanted to slap her and tell her to grow up.

If you fancy doing this meme consider yourself tagged.

Am I being unreasonable?

There is, within a website called Mumsnet, a section where worldweary mamas can ask if whatever bugbear currently afflicting them is acceptable or if they are being unreasonable. I mean one day to go onto it, but fear that my grumpiness and irrationality would prove too much and crash the website. So instead, dear reader, I shall grump here.

Am I being unreasonable to

1. Expect the postman to deliver MY parcels to me and NOT to my neighbour? Have spotted him wandering away from my frontdoor with a parcel only to have my neighbour bring it round to me later. And while we are on the subject of snail mail, when did first class post start taking 10 days to arrive from Reading (largish town not really that far from London?)

2. Expect the damn moths to bugger off? Have successfully vanquished the little horrors from one cupboard only for them to have moved into the one beside it and I can't find where their pupae are..

3. be a little narked when, after a day of eating a diet that a supermodel would class as austere, I stand on the scales and find I've actually gained weight.

4. to feel a little foolish that I've started a post about being grumpy about so many things and can't actually remember most of what I was grumpy about.

Right I am off to ice a chocolate cake.

A plague upon your house sir!

I'm feeling very old-testamont right now. First we had the floods back in July and now a plague of moths. The cute, dinky ones I wrote about back in May have followed us across council borders, are infesting one kitchen cupboard and have claimed squatters' rights. When I googled them I found out that they are flour moths and like to eat practically anything they can get their larva jaws into, like my herb & spice collection for example which has had, in the most, to be binned.
Last Saturday I had enough and cleared out all the food cupboards in the kitchen one by one, going through each shelf and binning anything that looked suspect or had cocoons on. Then each cupboard in turn was sprayed in bleach and closed up with what I thought was moth free foodstuff inside. Next day two of the three cupboards had moths in. So did the whole thing again and put things into plastic and glass containers to quarantine them. Next day two of the three cupboards clear of moths! But the third? Still infested! I went through the herbs and spices which are all in their little glass jars. The larva had gotten into them so into the bin went my massive collection. And the cupboard was rebleached and everything left out. This morning I put a few things back in and guess what. A few hours later, there's a moth, and on inspection of the things in the shelfs, I found some cocoons...
I am starting to take this personnally. It feels like there's a war going on between me and the moths and I have to confess, the moths are winning. So now everything is sitting out on the kitchen counters again having being inspected yet again for cocoons and the cupboard is once again seeped in bleach.
So any suggestions? I suspect I have two choices - either to bin everything in the cupboard, firebomb the shelves (or put them through the dishwasher) and hope that that clears the little buggers out, or put things back one at a time and see how it goes.

XYZZY

Well here we are at the end of the alphabet. We've successfully navigated the twisty little maze of passages, avoided any dwarfs with axes, treasure stealing pirates, and scared off the giant snake in the Hall of the Mountain King.*

Normal service will resume shortly with daring tales of moth-fights; and "Singer, or how I learned to love the sewing machine".



*No, I've not gone mad, it's from Collossal Adventure

U, V and W

U is for

I have a rather gorgeous blue umbrella with white polka dots scattered across it, and it never gets used. Why? Because

a. it is very hard to hold an umbrella in one hand, push a pushchair with the other and hold the FB's hand in my freakishly missing third hand.
b. umbrellas hate me as much as I hate them, and at the slightest breeze any umbrella I have stupidly tried to use, turns itself inside out. Thus becoming more a raincatcher than a rain protector.

Underwear. Why, when we can send a man to the Moon, can we not invent an underwired nursing bra that doesn't up the risk of developing mastitis? One is desperately in need of something to divide and lift as the whole breast-belly caboodle has slumped together in one squelchy mess. Oh that sounds so appealing doesn't it!

V is for

Volcanoes - the FB's current interest. We are on our second watching of a National Geo programme about predicting volcanic eruptions. I am being bombared with questions on pyroclasic flows, lava types, and why those people (the volcanologists) are wearing funny clothes (so they can go near the volcano without getting burnt)

Voluptuous
which leads us nicely to

W is for

Weight for it...it's not coming off! Help! I have a wedding to attend in just over a month and am pretty much still the same weight as I was after the Count was born. Exercise doesn't work, dieting doesn't work. So much for that rubbish spouted that breastfeeding helps you lose weight fast. Pah! I feel that I look like a young Ann Widdecombe (but without the henious blonde hair or Tory beliefs)

Turtle Power

My only pet as a child was a tortoise a friend of my parents gave us when I was 4 and my sister was 2. We named it Jip after my grandfather's gun dog. Like all tortoises Jip was very laid back and slow moving, until she wandered into the livingroom. Unfortunately the carpet there was very similar in colour to her shell so there were a few occasions when she was accidentally kicked across the floor. She also had a bad habit of peeing on people when they picked her up to say hello. Possibly a defence mechanism in case she was used as a football who knows, but the smell of tortoise pee is something you don't forget. It's not eyewatering like skunk but just odd.
Then one night my mother awoke to hear a bumping noise coming from under the bed. She thought Jip had wandered off and gotten stuck under there, but curiously everytime she moved the noise stopped. Then to her horror a rat shot out from under the bed. It disappeared out through the bedroom door into the bathroom and down the toilet. So the next day my parents called the National Pest Control who came round and put down rat poison in the drains and the back garden. That evening my parents were having a dinner party. My mother was in the kitchen preparing when the grate in the middle of the kitchen floor (for swishing the dirty water down after washing the floor) popped open and a half dead rat crawled out and started towards my mother who screamed and my father appeared brandishing a broom. Possibly the only time in his life he's actually held one!
The original rat had come in after the tortoise who had been safely asleep in her box. Her feet had been gnawed on by the rat but she was still alive. She became very vocal but refused to eat after the attack and died a few weeks later.

Queen, Royalty and School

Cheating I know, but I'm also very aware that the end of the month is looming and I've still rather a lot of posts still to go.

So in days of yore when knights were bold and women did....I wrote about studying Latin at school and mentioned having lunch with Brenda. It was the 125 anniversary of that school on the hill in Crieff and so to celebrate 125 years of getting successive generations of parents to part with their money the school invited the Queen and co to visit. A lottery was had to determine who would attend the luncheon held in the Fecky (Refectory which had been repainted especially for the occasion) and I was one of the lucky winners. Only three things stand out about the meal - firstly we had cutlery that you couldn't do a Uri Geller on, we had actual crockery - instead of the plastic molded trays sort of like the ones you find on aircraft, and thirdly, the food was actually edible. I'm sure there were speeches and so on but they have slid into one of the many holes in the sieve of my memory and have yet to work their way back out.

Somewhere amongst my stuff I have still got the offical menu and my invitation to dine. When I find them, I'll put them up here.

Penguins, Four Legged Furry

Ten years ago I shared a flat in Edinburgh with my sister and a large number of mice. The mice weren't our idea of ideal flatmates and after a mouse ran up my dressing gown and then down my bare leg we decided to get some kittens. One for my sister

(Froggy)

and one for me

(Velcro)

As I've posted before they turned out to be completely useless at catching mice (but rather good at dismembering giant spiders) but the smell of them kept the mice at bay in that flat. As kittens they loved water. It was not uncommon to go into the bathroom and find at least one of them sitting in the bath under the shower (and on one occasion, in the fish tank). And so they were christened the Four Legged Furry Penguins. Froggy will do anything for food - she worked out how to open the fridge in the flat in Edinburgh, and a few weeks back worked out how to get into our rubbish bin. Velcro is quieter, more reserved and very fond of cuddles.

P is also for Peace (and Quiet to follow) of which there is not much in this house. Isabelle to answer your question on how I have time to blog having 2 small children about - the Count sleeps through the night from around midnight till 11am which gives me time to do the housework and things with the FB in the morning, and then in the afternoon while the Count naps (big one for sleeping that boy) and the FB is playing I can blog, sew, read or gaze adoringly at ultraexpensive bags online.

Oil

When I grow up.... I want to learn to paint using oils. I had a lesson, once, a long long time ago when I was just a wee lassie of 12. My grandfather (not the one who bought the monkey) is an artist in his spare time (as was his wife and as was my other grandmother) and decided to teach me by coping a photo of a flower, I think called an Indian Paintbrush. He kept the finished painting up on the wall in his kitchen for over 20 years and then last year gave it to me.

So here on public display for the very first time I give you...

Nonsense

We do talk a lot of nonsense to our children, or is that just me? My parents tried to convince me that icecream vans only play their jingle when they've run out of icecream; I'm trying to convince the FB that they don't sell icecreams but cucumbers. Probably with as much success as my parents had with their little tale.
The idea for this post came about after I spent a while this morning trying, but not succeeding, to get the FB to believe me that the crashing sound he had heard while out on a walk was not, as he thought, the sound of someone doing some DIY, but was instead the footstep of an invisible giant who, being shy, had hidden from us. The FB was not having any of it, and said that no, giants are only found in stories.

Missed a few days (Aunty spider mentions below)

M is for

Mother. Of which I am one (if you haven't guess this then where have you been?).

Massive Spiders. My house isn't exactly infested with them but does have slightly more than I would like residing under my roof AND they aren't paying rent. I thought I was ok around spiders but apparently not if they are a certain size; little spiders are fine, tarantulas are fine, giant house spiders that snarl and drip foam from their fangs are not. Fortunately the Penguins think spiders are little toys for them to chase and then their basic dissection procedures on. Now our kitchen floor is littered with abandoned legs. I dread to find the torso.

Monkeys. My grandfather was in the Merchant Navy during and post WWII. On one of his trips away he purchased a monkey and brought it back to Britain with him. Alas it had to be given away to a zoo because it kept escaping from the house and stealing the neighbours' laundry off the washing lines.

Music. Drum and Base, Techno and R&B are NOT music but a form of aural torture.

Living

I've mentioned before that I've lived in a fair number of places over the years. Since MrV and I got together we have lived in 7 homes in 3 countries over 8 years. And everytime we've moved I've hated the new place until just before we move (again) when I realise that things weren't half as bad as I thought, and then I go on to miss the old place like mad once we have moved and regret moving in the first place. Part of the problem is that I am looking for somewhere where I will fit in, and not be so damn awkward around people. You see I am incredibly shy which has the downside of making me appear to be aloof, and rather stupid as I get very tonguetied with nerves.
My ideal place would be a mixture of Edinburgh (for friends, family and the city itself) and the Netherlands (for its liberal yet grownup society) with the weather of the tropics but without the hurricanes of course. Is that too much to ask?

Kismet

Is it my fate to have problems with the letter K? After all it is the first letter of my name and MrV's too but still it's a hard one to come up with.

Kismet - the Arabic for fate.

Jam

When I was young I used to go raspberry picking with my grandfather so my grandmother could make raspberry jam. She was an absolutely hopeless cook. In fact one of my father's siblings bought her a sign as a Christmas present that read "Dinner is served at the sound of the smoke alarm". My uncle blamed my aunt and she in turn blamed my uncle for the present but the sentiment was true, my gran could burn water. Her sausages were legendary, and were nicknamed Granny's Rusty Sausages for she would grill them, put them in the fridge, and then fry them when she wanted to eat them; so their skins were incredibly tough and well, rusty.

But she could make the most delicious jam.

Impossible

I is proving a little hard to write about. Sure there are numerous words out there that begin with the right letter but the blog muse seems to have wandered off for the evening, perhaps for an icecream? Who knows!

Tomorrow Ikea is coming to deliver some furniture including a shelving rack for the under-the-stairs-cupboard where everything cleaning related is stored on one tiny, overfilled and leaning at an unsafe angle shelf. Is it sad that I am so looking forward to putting up that shelfing rack? Or just natural since an iron has missed hitting me on the head several times as it toppled off the leaning shelf.