Where is my spring?

Hello Dear Readers,

Well from a fantastic birthday weekend to a lovely (if low key) weekend retreat in our favorite vacation spot, Cambridge!  The weather was really cold and rainy, and Molly and Katelyn had a mild flu, so we were happy to hang out and relax at home.  Here are Molly and Katelyn playing blocks (this was on the 16th of March, Katelyn's 2nd birthday - can you believe it?) Katelyn was totally into "bridges" that day, and with Molly having a hernia and me being exhausted from house stuff, I thought maybe building a bridge of blocks would be better for everyone. Katelyn agreed.

We went up Thursday night and had a great raw Taco Salad.  Chris and I were running around like crazy all day Friday trying to sort out the solicitor, move money and get a mortgage for our apartment (that's still going strong by the way, just waiting to hear back from the bank).   Friday Chris and I sorted out house stuff and we went to the Daily Bread, our favorite co-op in Cambridge (in the rain).

Saturday, Katelyn's birthday, Molly and I slaved away in the kitchen to make the watermelon cake Katelyn asked for.

Full of artificial colors and Jolly Rancher Watermelon Jell-o powder (did you even know Jolly Ranger MADE jell-o?).  That's jelly to my British readership.  
Here is the amazing, watermelon like result, painstakingly hand iced while Katelyn had her nap:

 Tah-dah! I thought it tasted pretty amazing, but probably only because I allowed myself to have a.) dairy and b.) cake which I haven't' done since I started my super duper work-out double whammy of P90X and Insanity.  I'm finished with both by the way, phew! and not a moment too soon as I've been laid up pretty much all this week with whatever flu/cold Molly and Katelyn had.  Kids make me sick,apparently, but then I WAS wiping her nose all weekend, so it was inevitable.

 Much to Molly's joy however, Katelyn wasn't as taken with this cake as I was, reassuring her that she won't be a little sugar fiend :-).  That's her "I don't want it" face, a phrase she's making more and more use of as she enters her terrible twos.  She was a perfect angel when we went to the restaurant that night, and even let Chris carry her back to the car on her shoulders. He's practicing for being an uncle to my sister's  kid......

Despite having a horrific cold I managed to head down to the river (in the freezing SNOW! Yes snow in London after March 20th!)  to watch my brother's scrimige against the other boats foolish enough to go on the river even though the International Men's Head of the River Race was cancelled today.  He wanted me to get some footage of them racing. As usual I couldn't tell which boat was his, so I filmed them all.  I hope he appreciates the lenghts I went to in the SNOW and freezing COLD while I have the FLU. That brother does not deserve me.  Sigh.  But I found the perfect sewater that I just HAVE to knit for him in this month's The Knitter's magazine. Clearly I'm a gllutton for punishment.  And cake. Delicious, non-vegan naughty watermelon cake.  MMMmmmm, made the whole trip worth it.

Staying in bed all weekend with my knitting, spinning and watching Star Wars IV, V and VI to speed my recovery, as well as eating most of the soups off of the Oh She Glows website. So far I've done a creamy mushroom and quinoa and triple lentil recovery soup.  Hoping for tortilla soup tonight if Chris can be persuaded to make it for me, I'm too tired to get out of bed again.  Well, except maybe to pursue some more Assasin's Creed III, I need to finish it before the next one comes out!

Hope you are having as much snow as we are here, I love love love it, so I'm not complaing.

Cheers.

Keep 'em coming!

Hello Dear Readers,

As you know, I'm not one to shy away from birthdays.  Call it middle child syndrome, but I like having a sort of holiday that is non-denominational and a great excuse to celebrate ME, and who doesn't like to have fun?  Yes, another birthday yesterday, and it's been great.  Sunday evening I went to the usual place - 222 Veggie Veg - to have a great vegan night out (I had the oyster mushroom and spinach Raclette, just so I remember next year).

Some of the usual suspects were there, Patrick, the hot house mate Monica, my hilarious friend Jane who we visited in Whitby this spring, though she is back at the museum now.

As a thank you when we went up to stay at her B&B, I gave her some handspun yarn from wool I bought on my birthday LAST year, in Ireland when we went with Adam and Melch.  My how things come full circle.  For you knitters out there that is the hat pattern from the cover of Woolley Wormhead's book Woolley toppers.  And for you long time readers of the blog you'll remember I met Ms. Wormhead at Knit Nation 3 years ago.

 

There was also Patrick and Aurelie from the museum, and Lizzy and Lucy from my knitting group.  I sat myself in the center of the table to try to get in all the gossip.  Here is Chris and I, another year older, another year wiser, and stuffed full of amazing vegan food.

 

Monday I had tea at the Maids of Honour tea shoppe near Kew Gardens with some girls from work, which is always a nice treat, and in the evening we had a Sheep Cake which Chris bought specially for me.

 

Here he is sprinkling on some stray bits that were not quite perfect, and me blowing out the candles.

As usual I got a fantastic array of gifts, which were all perfect in their own way.  To the right are the earrings Auralie picked out for me, tiny balls of yarn (a silk merino blend) with silver knitting needles in them.  Aren't they the best? Doesn't she have the best taste in jewelry? Like pearl earrings but better and for knitters.

Monica gave me some new pj bottoms, which I was sorely in need of, and put on immediately after opening the package.  Not pictured is the Manuka Honey Patrick gave me, which lives at work so that people at home don't chug it down like it's the cheap clover stuff.  (It's going really well in my Tea Pigs Chai tea actually). There was a package from Lush (it's a bad year when I don't get SOME Lush for my b-day) and a new book to read, so Monday night I indulged in a Lush bubble bath and read the book, can it get any better?

Patrick said he saw this knit kit for a bike seat cover over and over last month, different stores, different times and places.  Finally he gave up, listened to the universe and got it for me.  Really, it practically had my name all over it, he HAD to buy it.  Watch out, if you have a bike, you too may soon have a knitted bike seat cozy.  Even if you don't even know me! The girls from work also got me two knitting magazines, which is great because I always pause to look at them at the store, then think, nah, I don't NEED them.  But I do WANT them, and now I've got some to tide me over for this season.

I realized that I've been super busy the last few  months with P90X, Insanity and buying an apartment that I have really missed hanging out with friends.  Therefore, as the Year of Me comes to a spectacular close, I think this year should be the year of all of YOU, where I make a concerted effort to spend more time with my friends.  Of course this will be easier in the new apartment that we just had an offer accepted on!!  And I'm planning to decorate with the paper bird Jane gave me and enhance with the vanilla reed diffuser from my friend Nina!  Nothing is final yet, we are still in the early stages, but dudes, it's looking good.  Really good.  More details to follow.  I may get out of this thing with my soul intact as well as my sanity.  But there will be plenty of room for having people over for tea and over to stay in the luxurious pull out couch in the spacious living room.

Thanks to all of you who sent me birthday wishes. It's been a great year and I hope to see more of you (Skype or otherwise) in this next Year of You.

 

Cheers!

March already!?!

Hello Dear Readers,

 How can it be March? I know February is a short month but this is ridiculous!  We celebrated Chris's birthday with a lovely chocolate peanut butter fudge rice crispy thing from my still favorite blog.  Yesterday was my good friend Jennifer's birthday (shout out!) and tomorrow is Adam and Melch's birthday (shout out!), was that last year already?  But this also means that I can reveal some more of my secret knitting projects,

Can you tell what it is? It's the bigger on the inside shawl/scarf that I made for Jennifer's birthday.  You'll remember we exchange Dr. Who related crafts, and when I saw it in Knitty, I just couldn't resist!  See all the little Tardis' along the edge? Subtle, yet for the true hard core nerds, very very clever.

Last weekend I was seized by the start-itis bug, and got a little crazy with the knitting, most of it wasn't even baby related.  Well of course SOME was, but only the most adorable hat you've ever seen.  For reals.

 Didin't I tell you? Cute coming and going! I also need to make sure to send my sister those clips that go on the back of your hat to the back of your coller so the little monster doesn't throw it out the pram.....of course if s/he does it IS basically a cry for more knitting, that's how I would treat it.  "I'm throwing this hat out in a demand for more knitwear Aunty Heather."

Then of course I had to replace my most favorite wool socks which bit the dust this year. The trip to the Scilly Isles was the last straw, I darned them but it never took.  I've now used up the last bit of the glorious yarn made of crab shell (so soft, and of course it wears well in water, as you would expect of crab shell) which have already been matching socks for Molly and Katelyn.

 There was much debate in my Stitch n Bitch group about the accent color, I see it as blue but the words "mint green" were thrown around. Either way, I think this stitch pattern and color combo make these the most beautiful socks in the room.  Depending on the room, of course.

Finally I had this hat pattern from the glorious designer Ysolda Teague (great name for a girl btw, Isolda.  Just saying.  Cat and Jeff.)  I also had most of a ball of red yarn left over from a fornicating raindeer hat, and somehow I couldn't resist making it.  I think it'll go great with my powder blue coat, and the second of my two new dresses from Oliver Bonas, which you can see the top of in this photo.  It's so cute, I wish it wasn't 3 C still, hurry up spring!

House hunting continues apace, with the usual setbacks and dramas.  Looked at a few places, some are ok, the ones we can afford need some love. We'll see how it goes.  Sigh.  I should be more excited but I just know it will suck away my soul and desire to live by the end of it.

Also, next week officially marks the end of the Year of Me, but I'll have a review of that next time.

Cheers!

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!!