Feeling nosey

It’s a funny thing about having started a blog – the stats become quite an obsession. So I started this on Thursday, and I’ve already had 16 visits – mostly via John’s blog, but a couple of people have found me via google (bizarrely I appear on the second page if you google “blog knitting” – not bad for my first week!). People – please leave me a comment – I’d love to know who you are!

I won’t be posting for a couple of weeks – we’re off on holiday. (4 nights in a chalet on Rudyard Lake in Staffordshire – my MIL keeps warning me that it’s very basic, but I was brought up with family holidays under canvas – this thing has a solid roof – not to mention hot showers, a refrigerator (which allegedly freezes everything overnight) and a toilet – sounds like luxury to me . Then it’s my cousin’s wedding on the Wirral and then a few nights for me and the children with my parents while John comes home to get some work done/decorate Ruth’s room.)

Geek Code!

Thanks to Kate Pickering’s article on Knitty, I’ve now constructed my knitter’s geek code. Don’t judge me on the synthetic yarn – it’s cheap, and it washes easily.

Domestic Goddess? - Not a hope

So I have friends who seem to have more time for their children than I do, AND they have a clean and tidy house. I don’t understand how. I don’t feel I’m very good at doing either. (It’s a rare day when there isn’t a huge mountain of washing up to do – and that’s just the stuff which won’t go in the dishwasher.) Admittedly our bedroom is currently clean enough to eat off the floor, but that’s only because I spent all day on Tuesday spring-cleaning it.

Still, I had a major success this evening – we had courgettes for dinner, and Adam and Ruth both lapped them up I did Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s pasta sauce (basically sweat courgettes in olive oil and garlic until they will completely mush up with a spoon, then add grated parmesan and a little pepper – he uses cream, I didn’t – but it was still wonderful. )

Today was more of a Mummy day than a housework day – our toddler group has shut up shop for the summer, so we all met at the local playground instead. Ruth thawed far more than usual. (She’s usually very clingy, but although she shouted a lot at anyone who dared to try to share her equipment, she did at least go off on her own a bit.) This afternoon we had our neighbours’ boy round (a year older than Adam) and a lot of fun was had with water in the back garden – the highlight of which was Ruth deciding to sit in a full washing up bowl!

Oooh – and I did get two large loads of laundry washed and dried

The knitting has also progressed a little – at the moment I’m panicking that the neck-hole will be too large, but once I’ve done the neckband I expect it will be OK.

Hello World!

So why start a blog? Well, in this case it gives me the opportunity to be utterly self-centred and to write about what I do. I expect mainly to focus on knitting projects, cooking (somewhat bizarre) things, gardening, children and maybe a little maths teaching.

The current knitting project is this jumper for my 3-year-old son, Adam. Well, sort of this jumper anyway. There are a few basic problems – firstly my Norwegian is limited to “Jeg snakke ikke Norsk” (“I don’t speak Norwegian” ), and I don’t possess any circular needles. Those issues aside, from reading round I found this wonderful aid to translating Garnstudio patterns. Anyway, I’m now nearly up to the neck on the first piece (could be the front, could be the back – haven’t quite decided yet… )

Before that I made this cardigan for my 15-month-old daughter Ruth, from Knitty (my favourite online knitting magazine) – it took 150g of mottled pink acrylic (I know, I know, but it was cheap – just £1.79) and there was enough left over to make a tiny gilet for Adam’s bear (which he will get after he recovers from the trauma of his first bath – he fell in a puddle at the childminder’s yesterday ).

Recently the cookery has been focussed on preserving – in about a fortnight or so I made: strawberry jam*, rhubarb and elderflower jam, raspberry and loganberry jam, rhubarb and ginger jam and sweet pickled cherries. Apart from the strawberries (which John and Adam got from a “pick your own” ) and the ginger (which was lurking in the cupboard, previously on the shelf in Waitrose), they were all either grown in our garden or foraged from nearby. We also enjoyed a couple of batches of elderflower champagne – there are still some elderflowers lurking in the freezer – I have read that they should still “work” OK, but I remain to be convinced.

*(For any American readers – jam=jelly)

In the garden we’re nervously awaiting an inundation of courgettes – we’ve already had several, but are enjoying a brief lull. Unfortunately the children don’t like them, although I can sneak them into sauces by grating them We’re also enjoying chard – just one row is proving plenty to keep us in several portions a week. (Again – not popular with A&R, although Adam has now conceded to eating the stems raw – we’re getting there.) I’m also speculating about our plum tomatoes – we’ve a branch which has pretty much pulled itself off under its own weight. They’re all still green, and the leaves aren’t withering, so John is inclined to leave them, but I want to try green tomato pie, green tomato chutney, green tomato cake (I made that a few years ago – scrummy!), fried green tomatoes etc etc etc. The peas and broad beans were a little disappointing, but given that we paid them no attention and the seed was free, getting a meal’s worth of each is not bad going.

Which leads me to mothering – Adam has not been a well boy today He vomitted at the childminder’s on Tuesday (strictly Ruth’s childminder, but she’s agreed that instead of sending Ruth Mon, Tues, Thurs, we can send both of them on Tues, and just Ruth on Thurs during the holiday – we’d have to pay anyway, so I may as well make the most of the time off), but otherwise seemed fine, and was OK yesterday, but by this evening he was very hot, and complaining of tummy ache and feeling sick. Arrrggghhh – just as we’re about to go away on holiday! Still, it’s probably just a viral thing, and we’re not off until Monday – there’s even time for Ruth to get it and get over it by then.

Not a lot to say about maths teaching at the moment – term finished last Thursday, the next one won’t start until the beginning of August, so unless there’s anyone out there who wants some AS or A2-level maths tuition in the Cambridge UK area, that’s about it for now.

And finally chocolate – I’m an addict. I realised there was no denying this the night I ended up in tears at John because he ate the last square. (I freely admitted that I had had over half the bar, the issue was that he had the LAST bit). It is now not allowed in the house.