First Glimpses of Sun

Hello Dear Readers,

We had a rare treat for this part of England, two sunny days in a row on a weekend!  Chris and I took the opportunity to walk to the small but perfectly formed Barnes Farmer's Market on Saturday and I bought some special sourdough bread. 

 I also took advantage of the natural light to take some photos of some of my latest projects, which I can now reveal to you all since my sister has just passed her first trimester.  That's right, her five year plan is ticking right along, from the engagement Christmas 2010, wedding in Fall 2011, a house in the summer of 2012 followed by being pregnant by Christmas 2012, baby number one by September 2013!  Phew, I'm tired just typing that!  Anyway, amongst other things I have been casting on one baby knit after the other and queuing them up in my Ravelry list. The only limit..... is my yarn stash!

I got this matching sweater, hat and mitts set knocked out in no time, with another Olive Owl planned to use up the rest of this yarn.  I'm also doing a sheepy hat, a sweater with interchangeable fronts to minimize changes, and at least one more sweater, possibly sweater dress if it turns out to be a girl.  Baby Wu already is in my good books for having the sense to be born just before winter so s/he can enjoy all the benefits of my knitting straight away.

I'm also continuing with the spinning, have a few Christmas presents on the go, and a very fun birthday present that will be revealed shortly.....

Otherwise, on our second sunny day of the weekend Chris an I walked down to the club to see Patrick race against London Rowing Club.  Well, Patrick's club race, I'm not sure if we caught his race or not, but we enjoyed it all the same.

Can you spot Patrick in his boat?  Nope? Neither could we..... oh well, it's sunny so who cares!  Yes spring is certainly in the air, and we are soaking up every minute of it here in Putney.  There are even snowdrops and crocus up in the gardens, and daffodils in the grocery stores.







After this Chris and I walked around the neighborhoods a little further south of our place, scoping out possible new places to buy.....  Our lease is up at the end of July, so we have a deadline now, it's just a matter of moving all our money into the country and putting in an offer.  Oh, it's on.


Hope spring is busting out a little bit wherever you are!

The Usual

Hello Dear Readers,

A regular, quiet weekend this time, three loads of laundry, the third having just made the 'snap snap' sound telling me it's ready to be hung up.  As usual there has been another flurry of knitting activity, with me starting yet another project which I will be showing and telling you about in a few weeks........

I did make some amazing red bean paste buns though, in honor of the year of the snake!
 I used some red beans (also called adzuki) I had leftover from making energy bars last week.  I knew vaguely that red bean paste was made from cooking red beans with sugar, but I had no idea that it was as easy as pouring sugar onto red beans and then whipping them up in the food processor!!


I love red bean paste buns, but the kind you get at the grocery store often have a lot of bun and just a tiny bit of paste, and you have to eat very carefully around the edges to get just the right amount of bun/paste ratio, and then at the end you are left with one big bite of mostly paste and a little bit of bun.  Not so these, which I packed with as much bean paste as I could and rolled the dough very thin, you can see in the middle of the foremost pot here that the wrapper was a bit too thin and some paste oozed out.  I made so many that I actually used both my steaming pans at once, which I don't normally do.  These also come with the distinction of being Chris approved, he ate 4 in a row as soon as they were cool enough.

Regarding my last post on Insanity and P90X, Adam asked if I liked them and what I thought etc.  I think P90X was great because it was so well rounded, there was yoga and martial arts and weights and lots of stretching, but the workouts were pretty LOOOOONNNNGGG, an hour for most, and 90 min for the yoga.  They recommend that you do it fully the first time through, and then only do half the workout time once you are up to speed, so that is my plan after Insanity.  As far as results, I saw great results in the first two months of P90X, losing about 13 lbs, but I think the first 10 are the easiest and the last 5 the hardest.  I haven't lost weight on Insanity, but have stayed the same which is better than increasing.  I find the workouts are easier, but geared to plyometrics more than anything, which hasn't sculpted my figure (except my thighs, which are muscled monstrosities now) but has increased the power in my cycling every day, which is perhaps more useful to me then a svelte figure.  The workouts are also generally under 40 min, including warm up cool down and stretching, which I find psychologically easier to face in the morning than 60 min for some reason, though it's not that different.  Insanity is also more portable because you don't use weights or mats or anything, just your body weight.  If you think you will have to travel during your workouts, this is a much better option.  The schedule is also a little different, with P90X you do some of the same workouts throughout the 90 days, whereas with insanity you do the same 3-4 for 4 weeks, a week of the same "recovery" workout, then 4 weeks of different 3-4 sets of workouts.  So you get a week to get used to it, a week to improve, a week to really kick ass, and a week to think, I'm so done with these.  We'll see how my results are when I'm done, I'm in the middle recovery week now, so I have 5 weeks to go, then plan on doing a 50 % effort P90X.

After all this working out you need to refuel, so I'm off to the kitchen to do some cooking to last me a week, raw taco salad for dinner, quinoa soup for lunch, baked oatmeal for the week and veggie burgers to freeze and have on hand for desperate dinners.

Cheers

Short One

Hello Dear Readers,

No time for an epic post with lots of links, or rather there is probably time but I'm feeling tired tonight after a busy day, so I'll make it a short one.  Saturday Chris and I went out for a walk, we ended up walking past Oliver Bonas where they had a very pretty dress in the window.  I usually see and covet dresses at Oliver Bonas, but lets be honest, they don't fit over my hideously huge boobs and it's usually just a major bummer trying stuff on.  But the shopping gods were with me, and they were 60% off and I bought them, woo hoo!

In other shopping news, for Patrick's work he got a 100 pound gift certificate to spend at Selfridges.  See above for a Jelly Bean sculptre of Mr. Selfridge himself (reputed to have coined the phrase "the customer is always right").  Note me sporting new dress number one.  Patrick and I had a grand time trying to spend all his money, which we mostly spent on food.  At least we didn't waste it!!

Also notice here I have my hair in pin curls.  Mostly to keep it out of the way, but when I combed them out in the evening, yikes!

 Pin curls were used in the 40's-60's for shaping your hair into wacky styles.  I was thinking more Gracy Kelly in To Catch a Thief, but from the look's on Patrick and Chris's faces, it was not a winning look.

 And Patrick doing the photography didn't help, though I tried to get rid of my red eye in the second photo.

 Yikes, double creepy.  Oh well, it was fun to try anyway, and I was just washing my hair that night anyway.....

 More Creepy photos.  I can't seem to get photos to look the way I want in this blog, I want to be able to put two side by side.  Hmph.  too tired to look up how to do it.

Anyway, lots more knitting went on this weekend, and even a squid this week, but again, all surprises and gifts, so not really for public consumption, though I've mentioned the squid, so I'm showing it anyway...

Ok, off to bed, have to do my Insanity work out tomorrow morning.  It's week 4 and it's getting a little hard to hit play, though next week is all recovery week, and then it's 4 weeks of new (harder) exercises, hooray!

I've got a dream

Hello Dear Readers,

If you haven't seen Disney's relatively new film Tangled, you should.  It's hilarious, Disney at its best, the villains are so very evil, the good guy is very handsome, and the anthropomorphized animals steal the show.  It also has a great song called "I've got a dream" which if you haven't seen, you should check out this video for it.
 
 I've got three dreams really, have for a while.  One of these dreams began my second year of my undergraduate at William and Mary, taking Plant Systematics.  That was to work at Kew Gardens.  Well as you know I got a job there when I first moved to the UK, but the economy being what it is, my jobs were all temporary.  This week marks what I hope will be many hundreds of weeks to come of my PERMANENT JOB AT KEW as editor of IPNI.  Here is a screen shot of some of the work I did on my first day (hopefully you can click to make bigger?).

Yup. I put those in there. Me.  So far my job consists of trolling through recent publications looking for new species names or combinations and putting them on the website for the whole world (ok, the whole world of botany) to see and know they are there.  It's kind of coming full circle for me because the first real science job I ever had was at the Smithsonian, trolling through Paleobotanical journals putting collection information into the paleodb.org website...... ah nostalgia.

My second dream has been to travel to Asia, specifically either China, Japan or Korea, but other countries would suit.  I applied for a few teaching posts in Japan and Thailand when I was finishing my undergrad, but they didn't come to anything.  I do have, however, two good friends there, one living in Beijing and one in Seoul, so I'm making plans to go visit them either this year or next, so I'm getting closer to filling this one!

Lastly, but in some ways firstly, ever since I started earning money in High School I've been putting money away, at first in a piggy bank, bank account, and eventually mutual funds etc for the one thing I really want.  Many girls I suppose dream of a fairytale wedding or having a family but for me the ultimate dream is having a place of my own (see another Disney reference here).  Maybe it comes from being an Army brat and then struggling botanist, always shifting from one crappy rental to another, but this is my one big dream.  Doesn't have to be fancy, no big old gingerbread house with a white picket fence for me, it just has to be (more or less) mine.  A place to put nails in the wall, hang pictures, paint whatever color I want.  Invest in, plant a garden, buy furniture.  Well this weekend we got some news that our landlord is selling the house this summer.  That means we will be on tenterhooks waiting to hear if we are kicked out or not, that's the bad news.  The GOOD news is that Chris is on the case, and he is looking as only he can into our options for buying - a place of our own.  Nothing big or fancy, just a tiny two bedroom in or near Putney where he, Patrick and I can live.  And hang pictures (I have two in mind specifically).  And maybe paint a wall or two something other than Rental White (robins egg blue?).  And have a big futon in the living room for guests!!  We'll see, I don't want to get my hopes up just yet as this is England and things like this fall through all the time, but keep your fingers crossed for us and I'll keep you posted.

In knitting news, I've been doing a TON but unfortunatly it's all for people who read the blog, and it's all a secret.  I thought of jumbling up the pile of it and taking a photo - letting people who are getting the knitting try to guess what it is and if it's for them, but ultimatly it's just easier to show you this whale fail :

They are very comfy legwarmers, in an exquisite shade of bluey-purpley heather marl, but the gauge was a little loose, they were a little too slouchy, and frankly I needed the yarn for another more important project.  Ah well, legwarmers were always a short lived fad, weren't' they, and the weather has warmed up considerably here (it was 8 C today).  Anyway, I'll be showing the finished objects soon, very soon, so just hang tight.  In the meantime I've discovered the amazing blog for Hoxton Handmade and her Electric Sheep podcast, check it out if you don't already listen.  (And Steph, I know you've been a fan for years, I just had to get around to it eventually, now that Sticks and Strings is over and Brenda is less frequent).

Cheers!!

Dickensian London?

Hello Dear Readers,

What an exciting weekend, full of one of my favorite things - aside from raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens- I love SNOW!

 And we've had plenty of it here, starting on Friday morning, and continuing today and scheduled to go on throughout the week.  We spent a lovely hour over our lunch break at Kew on Friday playing in the snow, and enjoyed a warm cozy evening at the pub with mulled apple cider (alcoholic) and good friends as the snow continued to fall outside.  It was my last day working on the Reflora project on Friday, and I'm looking forward to starting my new post on Monday!!

I also I enjoyed the snow today on my way home from teaching knitting and shopping.

 

 Aww, our house all snowy, so lovely! Last night Chris and I walked back from Hammersmith in the snow, a quiet evening with beautiful snowy woods, it really makes the dark winter something special.  It also makes me start knitting furiously, I finished up a lot of projects when I got back from Cyprus, and promptly started a few more.  Mostly socks for Patrick when he rows, but I finished this sweater for me:

Doesn't it look great in the snow?  It's out of camel wool a friend got me from her trip to China, in exchange for two weeks of cat sitting.  I have four cakes of it and this sweater only took two (it helps that I'm nice and svelte from my P90X and Insanity work outs, not to mention eating the healthy goodies from the Oh she glows website.).  I just might do another since this is so nice, and warm!

I'm also doing some LEGWARMERS to wear when cycling in the snow and in my new office, since it's supposed to be a bit cooler than my old one.

Ah, really enjoying it while it lasts, I'm making a walnut loaf with roast new potatoes and brocolli for dinner, just the sort of thing for a snowy winter evening.

Hope you are all enjoying this winter wonderland if you are in the UK, and if not, nah nah na nahhhh!!!!

Cheers!

Cyprus Detox

Hello Dear Readers,

Phew, had a loooong break in Cyprus, 10 days.  It was pretty nice and warm when we got there, warmer than London anyway, but by the last day it actually snowed a little bit in the morning, extremely rare for Paphos.  I spent most of my time relaxing, though I did keep up (mostly) my P90X to the very last day.  The hardest part was continuing to eat right.  I did ok at the start of the trip, forgoing my usual pre flight Full English Breakfast for granola and fruit, but envied Patrick chugging his Eggs Benedict and Latte.....

I think my mother in law doesn't believe there is any food worth eating in London and tries to fatten me up to tide me over till my next visit.  In the end though I did manage to lose almost a stone (that's 14 pounds) and dropped a bra size, hooray!  Still can't do a pull-up, but I've definitely improved my upper body strength.  As a bonus, the ache in my right hip is also a lot less, pretty much the physical therapy I needed to get over the worst of it.

We tried to make the most of the good weather by doing a little bit of sight seeing, taking a hike in the Akamas nature region and checking out an archeological sight.

 Here we are at the north east corner of the island, not quite as high as it looks, but a good hike.

Patrick even got in a little bit of yoga at the top, though I don't thing jeans were made for the crow pose.

And after all that hiking we had to indulge in some Frappe's by the seaside.  It's great going in the off season, the service is spectacular, and this place served the best bread I ever tasted.

 At least we weren't as cold as these guys, who are preparing to jump into the sea after the cross on the epiphany.  Greek Orthodox celebrate the 6th of January as the day of Christ's baptism (they will all swear they are Greek Orthodox, but I wonder how many actually know that's why they throw the cross?)  We actually got there early this year and had a front row seat at one of the cafe's.

We also met up with our friends Georg and Margharita, and their two kids.  It was getting pretty late when we got to see them, and Andreas decided he wanted to take a nap in his bathtub.  Of course then little George wanted to get in too, so Dad had to intervene and break them up, which HE did by getting into the bathtub!! Good times.

 We had a spectacular sunset over some 2nd century AD ruins, though this was near the end of our trip and getting pretty chilly, I had to pull my snood over my head.
 

We also, on Patrick's suggestion, spent a day at the neighboring city of Limassos.  We had been there once or twice, but never really to explore the city.  I was plesently surprised by the lovely seaside walk, quaint historical shopping area and sites of interest.  I think we'll definatly put this on our list of places to explore in Cyprus.

Overall not a bat trip, it helped a lot to have someone else to talk to in English!  But I'm glad to be home.  I've put myself on a Cyprus Detox Diet, mainly eating stuff from this amazing website that I just can't get enough of.  Really, I haven't tried anything from here that I didn't like, give it a go! 

I'm also working on my New Years Plans, this year it is to work my way through the enormous Lush box Chris gave me, paying lots of attention to pampering my body now that I'm past the 30 mark.  I also will be spicing up my cooking by working my way through the recipes on the Oh She Glows blog as linked to above.  Sometimes you just get tired of making the same things, or at least Chris gets tired of what I make, so I'm going to really make an effort this year to cook some brand new things every week.  Of course the biggest New Years Plan is to learn eveyrthing I need to for my amazing new job!

But first, I have to go change my bike tire, I've only been putting it off since October.......

Cheers and Happy New Year!

Christmas Time Is Here

Merry Christmas Dear Readers,

Well, I had a whopping 5 day weekend last week, which was terrific.  The first two days were spent mainly doing laundry and napping, the perfect way to unwind after a particularly busy week at work trying to finish things off before I start my new job January 18th.

 Pat's girlfriend Beth was over for Christmas, we started the morning right with pancakes and sausages, but then Patrick could wait no longer, he wanted presents!  Here he is opening the Kindle Fire that the whole family got him, he's very excited.  He is coming with Chris and me to Cyprus so he's loading it up with plenty of reading material for the trip.

To Patrick's left is what Chris got me a, GIANT BOX OF LUSH PRODUCTS!!!  tied with a big bow.  Just what I always wanted!  It's the gift that keeps on giving, though I'm going to try to stretch it out for the whole year, we'll see.  We spent all of Christmas day in our pajamas, and played the board game version of QI that Beth got us.  If you haven't seen the show you should check it out.

 The next day, Patrick experimented with shaving the beard he's been growing for all of Beardcember, as he calls it.  Here he is sporting a trucker....

 And the bizzare cowboy look,  (Notice my Lush box in the background).  Fortunatly for all of us, he shaved off the whole thing in the end.  Phew.  I think he was taking a page out of this .

I went to work Thursday and Friday, but have been taking advantage of the pouring rain this weekend to do a bit of crafting.   I used this pattern to turn this XL t-shirt from my friend George....

 Into this super cute racer back dress.  I love how I was able to preserve the whole front motif of the shirt.


I also had another oversize shirt that I used this wrap around pattern to make up a front or back wrap dress for.  The little girl that I sew for gets so big so fast that I am trying out dresses with no waistband, on the mother's recommendation.  The racer back is sized for a two year old, and the wrap 2-3 so hopefully it will hold her for the next year or so!  We probably won't have sunny warm weather for her to wear it as a dress, but she can layer it over a top and tights, though girls that grow up in the UK seem to be able to wear little summer dresses - even in winter!

Oh well, at least we are headed to Cyprus tomorrow where the weather has been about 20 degres C (that's about 70).  It will probably feel warm enough to me to wear a dress, maybe even go to the beach!

Speaking of which, I'm headed off to Oxfordd street to do a little shopping.  After 12 weeks of P90X some of my clothes arn't fitting well and I wanted to see if I can get some stuff in the after Christmas sales to keep me looking good and show off my somewhat fitter body.

Catch you all in the new year!