How I Spent My Week

The title could be how I spent my month since it is the last day of January, and I have not posted at all during the month, but frankly, it hasn't been a month to remember fondly, so I don't really want to memorialise it.

I did pull myself together for some serious "let's start the new year off right" resolutions. I sorted through my side of the bedroom clutter and have held to the resolution to put clothes away instead of making piles 'to be dealt with later" — usually much later when they topple onto the floor. I also sorted through cookbooks, admitting to the fact I never look at half of them. Limited shelf space should be the limiting factor for collections. So there are piles to take to Oxfam.

Every January, Bob and I say we really should go to the cinema more often, and then we go once or twice during January, often find ourselves disappointed, and that is it for the remainder of the year. True to form we have been to two films this month, The King's Speech and The Social Network, and we loved both of them. With that encouragement we will now see if we follow up with a film in February, finally breaking the January-only cycle.

I am most proud of finding the courage to pull out into the daylight, all of my unfinished knitting projects or objects (UFOs). A few were finally frogged — knit-speak for ripping it out — or as the frog says, ribbit, ribbit. The remaining 24 UFOs were sorted into piles on a spectrum of "this can be finished in 30 minutes" to the infinities projects that will stretch into eternity — e.g. the granny square afghan of the 1980s.

This week I finished the 30 minute projects:

A bag that needed lining

A felted bag that needed lining and a button closure

Everyone should spend their days padding hangers . . .

. . .unless they are knitting dishcloths (from a Ravelry pattern). Although in this case I used wool, felted it lightly and made it into  a hot pad instead.

An exercise in learning Domino Knitting that I accepted would never go further. I also threw this into the wash to felt lightly, discovered that the geometric arrangement of attached squares let me sew them into this shape which probably has some topological name. I decided to simply call it my Shetland Artifact since I made it from Jamieson and Smith Shetland wool, bought at the shop in Lerwick when we were there. 

But the next day, this little fellow emerged!

The disastrous coat, knit nearly ten years ago, when I began knitting again.   The sleeves were too long, so I cut them and hemmed them, but it never fit, was too heavy to wear, did not have pockets. Last summer I threw it into a hot wash and a hot dry, and miracle of miracles, it came out as a perfect felted jacket! All it needed was a new button. The old button (see green bag above) was too large for the shrunken buttonhole.

And finally, this week I made marmalade. From organic Seville oranges in the mayonnaise and peanut butter jars. It would have been smart to get some jars before actually cooking up the marmalade. And from some old blood oranges and lemons in the Kilner jars. Now we just have to remember to put marmalade on our toast to use it up.

Day 25 or Christmas At Last!

Window #25

Let's be honest, it is about the gifts! And what a great haul of gifts this year for all of us this morning. Somehow we all managed to make the right buying choices, sometimes when we were flying blind, leading to great gasps of "this is exactly what I wanted, but forgot to ask for..."

My gifts pretty much all revolved around food. My daughters have decided I should stop being such a rubbish baker and Megan, who is the gift for baking, contributed the very very hot Flour Cookbook that she is cooking her way through. Her photos of this week's doughnuts and sticky buns qualify as food porn. Then Susan kicked in with Macaron heaven: the useful how-to handbook, and the Ladurée gold plated picture book to remind me how long it has been since I have been to Paris.

We all got pie makers, Megan courtesy of Williams Sonoma over Thanksgiving when we spotted it in our favourite catalogue. Then I discovered the pricey W-S offering is just a repackaged version from a B-list English TV chef, offered here for cheaper and cheaper as you move down the food chain of discount outlets. Megan kicked in the cookbook of English Pie fillings.

I'm not a fan of coffee table restaurant  books, but Noma would be a major exception. I think it was ranked as the best restaurant in the world recently. Noma is part of an amazing cultural centre in Copenhagen that is devoted to Denmark's northern island possessions. The lunch Bob and I had there a few years ago was a life experience to savour forever.

The salt grinder is practical in that it will replace the one that is all gummed up. The chocolatiere is the
fun extravagance for whizzing up some hot chocolate as England's coldest December in 100 years grinds on to the bitter end. Posh Crosswords from Susan, an Andy Cutting CD (world's cutest accordion player), some sock knitting yarn, and a tiny box of treats from Paul A Young, the best chocolates in London, round out the best Christmas ever.

Advent Calendar Day 24 - Christmas Eve is Here!

Window #24

What would Christmas be without favourite story books read to our children long ago, and still secretly enjoyed. Richard Scarry's Animals' Merry Christmas may be the first Christmas book we bought for Megan. Everyone in the family knows they can make me weep by merely mentioning "The Christmas Tree Lamb" story. Santa Claus and his Elves is a translation of a famous Finnish book that recounts a year and a day in the life of Santa Claus. The Finns know these things because he lives there apparently. I haven't seen any adverts this year, but when we moved to London, there used to be daytrip flights to Lapland for families to visit Santa at home. Everyone knows The Polar Express, which was maybe never a big favourite of our children, but it does remind us that Chris Van Allsburg was our next door neighbor in Providence when he was writing and illustrating it. An Early American Christmas is our all time favorite. Last year we were able to find a copy for our grandchildren, so a new generation can continue to be enchanted by the story of the German family who brought Christmas to an American village steeped in Puritanism.

Merry Christmas to All and to All a Good Night — as the most famous story of all concludes!

Advent Calendar Day 23

Window 23

We have presents! Our local bookstore provided and then wrapped most of what I needed. A present all the way from South Africa arrived in the post today. Christmas can come on time, on schedule.

We also have two more cookies — Lemon Spritz and Bob's favorite Almond — the last cookies are still dough, sitting in the refrigerator awaiting Susan's Thumbprint tomorrow.

Tomorrow is devoted to food — buying it, preparing it, and serving it. Tonight is devoted to making the final list of the season, keeping everything in order tomorrow. On the other hand, maybe curling up in bed with a book and a cup of mint tea sounds like a better idea.

Advent Calendar Day 22

Window #22

Out with the old. . .the world is reborn on this post-Solstice day. . .  and in with the new. . . My feet can rejoice in the arrival of my new Giesswein slippers were delivered today. I've been wearing these comfy Austrian boiled wool slippers since buying them first at LL Bean decades ago. Every 4 or 5 years they give up the ghost and need replacement.

The pink pair has real sentimental value because I bought them in Venice. There were people who thought that slippers as a souvenir of Venice was an odd choice, but hey, I got to remember Venice every time I wore my slippers. The pink ones from Venice had a covering of cable knit over the boiled wool, a style I had never seen before, but I'm afraid they didn't wear quite as well as the plain old boiled wool. Today my favourite bright red Giessweins arrived, and when my navy fleece robe arrives from Beans, I will truly be ready to settle in for that long winter's night.

Advent Calendar Day 21

Window #21

The Shortest Day

And so the Shortest Day came and the year died

And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world

Came people singing, dancing,

To drive the dark away.

They lighted candles in the winter trees;

They hung their homes with evergreen;

They burned beseeching fires all night long

To keep the year alive.

And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake

They shouted, revelling.

Through all the frosty ages you can hear them

Echoing behind us – listen!

All the long echoes, sing the same delight,

This Shortest Day,

As promise wakens in the sleeping land:

They carol, feast, give thanks,

And dearly love their friends,

And hope for peace.

And now so do we, here, now,

This year and every year.

Welcome Yule!

Susan Cooper's poem written for and recited at the Boston Christmas Revels. 

Advent Calendar Day 20

Window #20

Heading toward the Winter Solstice Watch: Sunrise at 8:03//Sun peeks through gap in Hampstead roofs at 8:34//Sun reaches top of same Hampstead roofs at 8:53//Sun disappears behind low clouds by 10:36//Sun   breaking through clouds at 11:23//Some pale blue sky as the sun reaches midday on its low arc across Hampstead rooftops//Sun has once again dropped to the height of the roofs at 13:54//Sun has dipped below the rooftops at 14:27//Grey sky has replaced any wisp of pale blue by 14:52//Lights on as darkness descends at 15:28//Sunset at 15:53.

This year's Winter Solstice will be tomorrow, 21 December, close to midnight at the Universal Time/Greenwich Mean Time of 23:39 which happens to be our local time, but this year the sky has a special event planned for the Shortest Day — a total lunar eclipse. The first time since 1638 when the two phenomena have occurred on the same day. The eclipse will begin here in London at the time Bob's alarm is set for every morning, but because the moon is so low in the sky right now, we won't be able to see much of anything.

1638 was another period of political and religious unrest. Civil War would break out in England in a few years. Meanwhile unhappy religious sects and congregations were settling themselves in North America, including in Hingham where the Norfolk congregation of Peter Hobart had been living for three years. Mainland Europe was tearing itself apart in the 30 Years War that pitted Protestant reformers against the Catholic Holy Roman Empire. The Ottoman rulers offered support to Hungary, and Austria to this day still can't quite accept the idea of Turkey as a member of the EU.