Sometimes I am convinced that this phase of my life must be a test

In the last seven days:

• Sunday: Washing Machine broke and flooded kitchen mid cycle
• Monday: 33rd birthday
• Wednesday: Launch of biggest project I've ever worked on
• Thursday: Break-up with Humphrey
• Saturday: Shower explodes and forces me to turn off mains water completely. Plus hangover.

I am not running around with my knickers on my head doing a chicken impression so I think I've probably passed. 

The break-up was something I brought about although unwillingly. It was one of those ones where there's nothing incompatible, other than the level of commitment each is looking for/able to give at the time. We could have continued quite happily on a casual basis but I want someone to share life with, not just evenings, so it had to end. I'm pretty glum though because he was really lovely and I think it could have been great had it been right for both of us. Plus I could have camped at his this weekend and used his washing machine and working water supply.

Source: sadanduseless.com via rita on Pinterest

Meanwhile I've barely touched any knitting. Feel I have lost a bit of mojo there. Instead I have been cracking on with the hexagon patchwork quilt top. I finally started sewing the little buggers together by machine, even though they are paper pieced. It was all taking too long and I could do with a new duvet cover so I decided to hurry it up. I'm using a very small zigzag in coordinating thread so in fact you can't see any difference until you look up close. I'm just making the last ones ready to be incorporated.

It's still going to take a while but it'll be pretty amazing when it's done.

Lastly, this may explain the hangover.

My usual Mule but with raspberries thrown in for no discernible reason other than "there were some in the fridge". It's all good. I've been out and bought 5 litres of bottled water. Should last me til lunch.

PS: Sometimes things happen to remind us that life does not revolve around ourselves. The man I talked about in my previous post was declared clinically dead on Thursday and, with his family gathered around him, his life support was turned off. He had worked at one of the organisations three floors above ours for 27 years. 

"Do not fear death so much, but rather the inadequate life."

The title of this post is a quotation by Bertolt Brecht.

The reason for it is because I had a half day today and as I was leaving I was pushed out of the way by a man running through the entrance to the building. One of the receptionists was outside and I jokingly made a kind of "Blimey, what was that all about?" comment. It turns out he was fetching equipment for the paramedic who was trying to restart the heart of a man lying on the floor in the alcove behind reception. I don't know his name but I have seen him helping out on reception during lunch hours or coming out of meeting rooms. We smile and say hello. I also don't know whether he made it. Resuscitation should never be a spectator sport so having ascertained there was nothing I could do I thought it best to clear out. From a physics point of view, it's all gone a bit Schroedinger.

I saw the guy yesterday and we said hello, and he looked absolutely fine. I'd guess he is about 55. It's just got me thinking once again about the way life can just end in the time it takes to snap your fingers. It also made me think a bit more seriously about the 'bucket list' concept too. 

Coincidentally, Humphrey and I discussed this recently. Humphrey is not keen on me sharing personal stuff about our relationship on the blog but I don't think he'll mind me saying that number one on his list is to train 3 kittens to form a pyramid. Better than this one too.

The topic came up because I had just seen the Guinness Book of Records certified largest model of an Ecoli. I claimed I could now tick this off my list of things-to-do-before-I-die. My other items are

• Visit Machu Picchu
• Punch someone in the face
• Have a black eye
• Go to Wrestlemania

Obviously this is all quite light hearted (but seriously, I want to punch someone in the face so don't mess with me) (not really) (really) but any of us could go at any time. Pop. Gone. Or something life changing could happen. I'm reading Oliver Sacks's "In the Mind's Eye" which is like his previous "Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat" and others but focuses on visual phenomena. For instance, people wake up having had a stroke and can no longer read. They can see individual letters but can't put words together. 

A few weeks ago a friend's four year old grand-daughter happened to remark she couldn't see out of one eye and the next day was diagnosed with infant glaucoma and her Mum was told she's already lost 85% of sight in one eye. One conversation and everything changes. 

It has all got me thinking.

I hope that guy's all right.  

Seen about town

I did a little blog surfing last night and would have posted these then except the washing machine then broke and flooded the kitchen. Not quite the relaxing evening I was hoping for but hey, life sucks sometimes.

So on this, the 33rd aniversary of my mighty birth, I bring you a blog round up...

We start with another celebration - Erqsome is married! 

Doesn't she look beautiful? Her blog is always interesting to read and you can find it here.

From one lady to another - Colour Me Katie is a photographer who also takes part on these improv stunts. The previous videos are on youtube and I thoroughly recommend them. 

You can see her blog and the current improv video here.

Continuing with the theme of outrageous sightings - Sister Diane has a real eye for vintage crafts. The final picture in this post has to be seen to be believed. 

Her blog is here.

Another thing that amazes the eye are these carved gourds. I would *love* one of these. 

The Dudecraft blog focuses on contemporary craft and always has something amazing to look at. 

Another amazing thing to look at is this sewn puzzle ball.

I love Thimble's blog. She does book reviews, recipes, tutorial round ups and more, all accompanied by lovely photos. She says this ball is easy to make?! I dunno. 

And so to finish on the surreal. Fabric printed with a cute squirrel kicking a cute dog in the face. 

Dress a Day loves vintage fabric and vintage dress patterns even more than your average and her imagined conversations between pattern models are always delightful. She links to an Etsy shop with a sale category of "Most Frightening Fabric". Brilliant. 

Only sleeping

I do not know how people with those high pressure jobs do it. Last week I had to do hours such as 8-6, 8-7, even 8am-9pm on friday. It has left me feeling like a used tissue. Combine it with the waking up early (which oh yes I'm still doing) and by the end of the week I was practically dragging my knuckles along the floor as I shuffled from one thing to another. It is all because my mahoosive IT project is due to launch next week. I think I've cracked it now. I really hope so because I do not want another week last that one. I'm a 9-5 girl as that is the only way I can get my knitting fitted in. Being so tired I felt unable to pick up most projects, although I did decide I could manage sewing on buttons.

I love buttons. I got the bag on ebay and it arrived with a couple of mud patches on it with the mud crumbling off. I contacted the seller to be told he had described it as 'used' so what did I expect? Used is one thing, but 'soiled'? It all came out in the wash though.

It's been a bad week to be stuck in the office. This is the Thames last weekend but gives you an indication of what it's been like. 

Once again I was reminded of lovely Egypt.

As a divorcee-to-be I will naturally be going on holiday with my parents in September and am wondering where to go. Egypt is probably a bit outside our budget. Can anyone suggest anywhere that will be warm in september, not too crowded, historically interesting, beautiful, near water and is cheap? There - not too hard is it? I wondered about some bit of Croatia or somewhere around there. Um....

I went to the amazing second hand furniture shop Emmaus in Lewisham last weekend. They describe it as their Greenwich shop but that is rather optimistic. Regardless of where it is, it is awesome. The organisation is a bit like freecycle except they come and pick up your unwanted furniture and junk for free and sell it on at knockdown prices to people who want it. The money then goes to rehabilitating homeless people. It really is winwin for someone without a car who just needs to get rid of lots of stuff - like when I moved out of the old marital home. I really really wanted to get the beautiful 30s dressing table with mirrors and drawers and delicate carving which was all of about £40 but sadly I only had need of a bedside cabinet, which I got for £8.  The reason for mentioning this though, apart from bigging up Emmaus, is that 3 doors down is the Knitshop.co.uk shop! I had no idea. This is what I came away with:

I have no idea what I'll do with it - which is very bad and anti my stash policy but it was too fun not to get. I assumed from the outside of the shop and the window display that they were either brand new or it was a temp site. Turns out they'd been there 2 years! Seems a real shame since I wasn't even sure it was open until I actually saw someone else come out and it has lovely big windows which could look great with a nice display. But I guess the low key thing must work for them so fair enough.

Tomorrow is the Byrne Birthday and I have a Squidy Date Cake in progress to take to work. The recipe really is hard to beat and very easy. I have high hopes of not burning it to buggery like with the cinnamon muffins last week. I've added actual cherries instead of jam. I stewed them with some sugar first to break them down so am looking forward to any difference it might make. 

Luchador Love

Humphrey played a blinder this weekend. He produced tickets to watch the Luchadors (mexican wrestling) at the Roundhouse in Camden. I didn't want any of you to feel left out:

It was quite different to WWE but I still managed to shout "hit him" quite a bit and generally boo and cheer a lot. 

It was compared by a man in a silver boiler suit. Want. 

The highlight for me was Cassandro - a genre of wrestler not seen in WWE which I feel is a great shame. He strutted to the stage wearing a high cut wrestling outfit, slashed to the navel, with full make up and hair so bouffant and glittery as to be worthy of a spotlight even without the attached man. 

He played to the crowd obviously but was actually quite good. 

This was an early birthday present for me and even more impressive as Humphrey had not had any exposure to wrestling before meeting me. He made it through without complaint and with mucho verve which was all to his credit as I do know how freaking weird I am to love this stuff so much. Time for the big reveal? Here he is...

(He's the one on the right). 

In life's other sphere I made some clouds. 

That seems to have sapped my crafting mojo. Am unable to start or continue with anything else which is very irritating. Fingers crossed it does not continue much longer. 

Holiday Round-Up

A few days ago I said I wanted to do this lot:

• Boot Fair today (not going to happen because it is pouring  - really pouring - with rain)
• Longleat when it is raining less
• Visit Bath as I never have and there is a quilt museumamongst other things. 
• Knit knit knit
• Read read read

I have rented a car so I will also be doing lots of tootling around looking at the surrounding countryside, collecting clouds.

Sure enough the rain did knock the boot fair on the head. Longleat was the subject of my last post and was awesome. Bath is another 2 hour drive each way so I decided against it after yesterday's venture was planned. And I have knit, knit, knitted and read, read, readed. I've also driven more than 550 miles since picking the car up on saturday! A big lump was the trip yesterday to Greenways, which was the holiday home of Agatha Christie. I am a big fan and have read all the books and (as far as I'm aware) seen all the TV adaptations too. I was only really expecting the house so the grounds came as a pleasant surprise. 

Sadly though the rain did put a stop to too much exploring. The house itself was lovely and was a real home - not a museum. So there were her own books mixed in with family photos and collections they all added to over the years and so on. All rather lovely. I also went with my mum and my dad, who had taken the day off especially, so it was a rare but lovely family outing too. 

So Greenway replaced Bath, but how about those clouds? Well...

I know it's not much but it has been 100% cloud cover most of the time which is not very exciting. I will add to my collection over time. 

Tomorrow sees me heading back to London and I am having one of those internal arguments with myself over whether to go to IKEA or not. The only thing I need is a baking tray and I can get that anywhere. But... NO! I'll only spend money I don't have on things I don't need. No. Not going. Final. Bah. Being married was so much cheaper than being single. Not that I regret my decision, but I have been reminded of Pooch a lot this week. He really liked coming down here and we had planned to go to Longleat together. But then we had planned a lot of things, and then lots of things happened which I certainly hadn't planned, and so I have had to make new plans.

As I'll still have the car on sunday Humphrey and I have discussed a little jaunt off somewhere. Leeds Castle has been suggested. I haven't been since I was a nipper so I'm up for it - just depends on the weather. It is saying 'sunny intervals' at the moment but it has been so changeable all week I am not sure how reliable it is. 

Longleat Love

I had the most AMAZING day yesterday. I have wanted to go to Longleat since I first saw the lovely Ben Fogle looking scared of the tigers on the BBC back in 2000. Even though my Mum's house is much closer to it than london it was still a 2 hour drive each way, punctuated by me stopping to take pictures of fields and sky, such as this one.

I have been thinking of doing a fairisle in landscape colours since a discussion with Nickerjac on a drive back from SkipNorth. I have been collecting bad photos of the landscape since then. Then a query on twitter led me to a colour palette generating tool. 

I chose this one because it gives you 5 colours and a choice of dull or vibrant whereas a lot of the others - google, there are loads - give you 10-20 colours which is too many for fairisle. Or too many for what I had in mind. I am yet to find my perfect landscape but it will occur at some point and then I'll be on to Jamiesons for the wool. 

Back to Longleat - it is the seat of the Marquess of Bath and consists of an enoooormous house, an animal centre with things like guinea pigs and bats and then a mahoosive safari park which has all the wild animals you can think of. Prepare yourself for many, many photos. I am not going to go into it all blow by blow as that would take about 3 pages of text so these are the highlights. 

1. Boat Ride around gorilla island where we saw the silverback gorilla who gets grumpy when it is "too hot, too cold, too wet or too windy" so was obviously grumpy. Hippos and sealions also in the lake. Real, big hippos. 

2. Feeding the Rainbow Lorikeets. I had one on each shoulder, two on each wrist and then one landed on my head. 

3. Holding a python called Sir Hiss. (No photo of this - the downside of doing these things alone is no one to hold a camera.)

4. Seeing an escapee American Chipmunk in a beautiful rose garden.

5. Watching a rhino take a mud bath and wriggle to squidge about in it.

6. Having a tiger walk nonchalantly right by the car - about 2 metres away. 

7. Watching a tiger try to catch a squirrel. There's actually a very poor quality video of that here. This is it pretending it's cool afterwards. (It is cool.)

8. Seeing the lions lying on their backs, legs akimbo, enjoying the sunshine.

9. Zebra bottoms

My top thing for the whole day has to be the Lorikeets. The word 'hard-boiled' kept coming into my head and I realised they made me think of wool which has been felted and has gone quite robust and tough. They did look a bit like normal sized parrots which had shrunk in a hot wash and their expressions were so grumpy - as if they had just felted their best jumpers by accident. But then when I occasionally tried to shoo one of the zillion hanging off me away it would just look at my hand with this world weary expression and give my finger a little nip. Not in a violent way - just to indicate that they had been shoo'd away by better people then me and so I might as well give up. 

I do like animals with attitude. Awesome creatures. 

If you were so inclined you can see all my Longleat photos here. I would 100% recommend visiting and that's without actually having made it into the house. My Mum was a bit worried about the animals being cramped but look at this:

That is just a bit of where the giraffe, rhinos, zebras, camels and a few others hang out. They are free to wonder all over the place and they are all in excellent condition. 

Today looks like being the best weather I'll get down here so I'm up for a quick run into Minehead to look in all the charity shops and a trip to the best fudge shop in the world. Then back here to lounge in my sun lounger and do a bit of knitting in the sun. Knit knit knit. 

Il Pleut

I am on holiday and at such times, even though I am only in Somerset, I feel the urge to break into French. A minor problem is that my french got as far as GCSE and then went down hill in the intervening 16 years. So it's a bit franglais only without the talent true franglais requires.

Imaginer mon surprise quand je saw le pub sign ici.

How I ended up in Malmesbury is again one of those things that can only be understood when you consider my quite obscene lack of any sense of direction. And this is even with a satnav. Ah yes, dear Liam, who has done so much for Nickerjac and I on our trips to SkipNorth, again saved the day in getting me from A to B and I wouldn't have ended up in Malmesbury had I not got it into my head to pop to Cirencester using road signs alone and then got lost. 

Liam did rejoin me to do the right thing in getting me to Lacock where my sister lives and where such tour de forces as Pride and Pejudice, Cranford and Harry Potter have been filmed. Not having seen any of these (although I have admired the mitts) this means nothing to me but she says anyone who has watched those should recognise this. 

It is an amazingly picturesque place without being quaint and 'ye olde' about it. I would recommend a visit if you're in the area.

What will I be doing with my week in the deep south? The plan so far is...

• Boot Fair today (not going to happen because it is pouring  - really pouring - with rain)
• Longleat when it is raining less
• Visit Bath as I never have and there is a quilt museum amongst other things. 
• Knit knit knit
• Read read read

I have rented a car so I will also be doing lots of tootling around looking at the surrounding countryside, collecting clouds. I believe I have mentioned this book before:

And the accompanying one:

And I saw many fine examples while driving yesterday. But being a safe driver I didn't try to photograph them while driving. You need traffic jams for that, a la Crazy Aunt Purl. So if the rain stops and some non-blanket clouds appear expect regular cloud updates on twitter and on here. 

Now where was I...

I literally sit at my desk and say this out loud 10+ times a day. I have one of those jobs where it is rare for me to be doing something without interruption for more than a few minutes at a time. Phonecalls and colleagues combine to keep things fairly varied and I actually rather like it as it's hard to get terribly bored when you can only do one thing for a few mins at a time without a break. But it does mean that I frequently forget what I was doing and so muttering my little mantra seems to help me focus again.

Blogging is something that seems to have been interrupted by life recently. More than 2 weeks since my last post and lots of fairly disconnected things have happened. For example, I have a FO.

The pattern is Prism (Rav link) and is free, simple and quite effective, just how I like my patterns and my men.

I also received an awesome swap parcel from the Spring/Summer Swap via the UK Swap Group on Ravelry.

My awesome benefactor was none other than PurlPower who I am pleased to see has been suitably spoilt by her own sender. The piece de resistance has to be the handkerchief.

Isn't that amazing? I'm torn between using it and framing it.

In between knitting I've been doing some sewing. One FO is this dress for my mum.

I made myself the exact same dress in the exact same fabric and love it. I know making her the same one is a little sarah-ferguson-freaky but she lives in somerset so we're rarely at the same gala events so I think it'safe. I've since made her another in red gingham which is her favourite fabric but I'm not as sure about it as the other one. I am due to go down to visit them on saturday for a little holiday so will see what she thinks of it then. Of course being my mother she'll say it's amazing whatever she actually thinks but I can also take the scissors to it if it doesn't look right.

In what is now a rare foray into yarn shopping I bought two balls of Kauni with the idea of swatching for a fairisle/intarsia jumper I've had in mind for a while. Kauni is so hard to photograph so just do what you can with this, complete with bits of authentic detritus that always seem to appear in Kauni as in Noro.

The idea was for a cloud jumper or cardigan so off I went....

...but that colourway didn't give me the contrast I was after. I'm now wondering about using the kauni as the background colour and dyeing something for the clouds in a more variegated white/grey colourway. Thoughts?

Then of course while all this frankly usual creative stuff has been going on there is Project Humphrey tootling along in the background. We are now up to 5 dates with a 6th planned for friday. He continues to be highly entertaining although things got awkward last weekend when a conversation I started produced the most accurate impersonation of a rabbit caught in headlights that I've ever seen. And I've scared* a lot of men in my time.

Despite that things do look pretty good so that's one vote from me for matchaffinity.com, just in case anyone is considering having a go at online dating.



* When looking on Flickr CC for a photo to illustrate this I came across this: "Scare Bear".

No longer available which is fecking annoying. I so want one.