ornaments

With cookie dough to mix up and a few other things that need to get done before bed, this will be another photo entry.

This is the first Christmas ornament we ever acquired. It was a first Christmas ornament from my mother, I'm not sure where she got it, (but it does scream "Hallmark!" at me) and it sat in my jewellery box for six years before we had our first tree:



This is a (dark) photo of our newest Christmas ornament. I like to buy a couple new ones every year, and dispose of the boring, cheap-o plastic balls I just bought to fill space with during our first year. Behold, the little tin horsie:



And this is my favourite ornament. I just love it because it's so silly looking. It's a floorwax! No, it's a dessert topping! It's a reindeer! No, it's a moose! Hard to say, but it's definitely made of gingham:



And I love it so.

one hall, decked

Well, the oven works, but the broiler is fucked, and after the £35 service call telling us the grill is fucked and replacing it, if they even can, would cost, oh, almost as much as a new oven anyway, we've decided we can do without grilled cheese on toast for a week or two, and we'll buy a new oven in the January sales. My advice to you, without even requiring a £35 service call, is DO NOT BUY A BELLING OVEN.

Eh, screw it. I'm in a good mood, since my Xmas shopping is done, done, done, and I will be able to bake my cookies this weekend in my crappy, doomed oven, so I'm just going to post some photos of my house and be done with this entry.

A better photo of the entrance hall than the one I posted last week:



Going up to the lowest landing:



And going up the stairs:



(You would think, after three-and-a-half years here, I'd have more stuff on my walls, wouldn't you?)

Looking down from the middle landing:



And here's my cat, looking like an idiot:



He does it well, doesn't he?

more bad appliance karma but good stuff too

In one of those freakish coincidences that make me believe that god hates me, my oven broke today, the day I was planning to start baking cookies. It broke at exactly the same time last year, December 20th, just as I was about to bake cookies. This could be god's way of saying LAY OFF THE BUTTER AND SUGAR, FATASS, but I suspect it's mostly divine spite and meanness. Or I would, if I were a believer, but whatever, my oven is broken, and I am so pissed I can hardly stand it.

Fortunately, the guys who repaired it last year are coming tomorrow to fix EXACTLY THE SAME PROBLEM tomorrow, but you know, I don't blame them, especially since, as it turns out, the "manufacturer" of my oven stopped actually manufacturing ovens a few years ago, and went into the business of putting their badges on cheap, shitty ovens instead. My oven is a piece of crap, and this is the last time I'm going to put any money into it. Next time it breaks, we get a new one. I just want to get through Christmas on this one. It's just the heating element, and it was cheap to fix last time, so I'm not that worried. Phil is going to stick around during the morning tomorrow, since he's waiting for his Christmas present to arrive, and I won't be tied to the house waiting for repairmen, so I'm OK with it.

He's getting a new lens for his camera, which he picked out himself, because we are old married people and long past the point of trying to surprise and delight each other with our holiday presents. He's surprised and delighted that I'm willing to let him buy yet another lens this year, and that's good enough. I will be getting jewellery, not sure exactly what, but I showed him a bunch of stuff I like, so he has the general idea.

I finished up my Christmas shopping this afternoon. We went downtown, I pointed to some pretty, sparkly things I liked, and then we split up. I went to get what I needed, and he took his camera up the hill to take photos of Liverpool. Liverpool has quite a beautiful and interesting waterfront, and he spends a lot of time photographing it. Things weren't too dreadfully crowded downtown, it being Wednesday and still not quite the final, panicked rush point for most people, so I had a relatively easy time getting what I needed. We hooked back up after about an hour, had a cup of coffee, and then went to dinner at our local Italian joint. We haven't been there in a while, and given how good the food is, and how nice the people who run the place are, I have to wonder why. There was an error in the wine order; they brought me a full carafe instead of half, and as this drunken rambling probably indicates, I opted not to send it back, but to drink it all. And now I am merry and mellow and not all that bothered by my crappy oven's inconvenient breakdown. because I've just spent an hour and a half enjoying good food and my beloved's company, and damn, forgive me for being semi-drunkenly sentimental, but I really do love the guy I married. He's sexy and smart and good-looking, and he makes me laugh by quoting Half Man Half Biscuit lyrics to me while I'm trying to drink too much wine, and there is no Christmas gift in the world I could ever receive that would be better than him, not even a pony or Barbie's Dream House.

smells like home

I've finally reached the point on the scarf I'm currently making where I think, wow, I've done quite a lot, I'm really getting there. All knitters reading this (and really, who else would?) will know that this means I have now entered a timewarp, and I will be knitting for seven thousand years or at least two days (they will be indistinguishable units of time, trust me) before any more conspicuous progress is made.

This point where time and progress merge and stubbornly stand still is particularly noticeable with this project, which is a scarf knit flat on a 80cm circular needle, so I can stripe many colours of yarn and make a fringe at the same time. 300+ stitches per row, folks. Zzzzzzzzz. Its sole redeeming feature (besides the fact that I think it's gonna look great) is that at least I get to change colours every row. The yarn is lovely, I adore the colours, the fibre blend (50/50 merino and silk) is one I'm inclined to think is the most enjoyable for me to knit with, and it's my favourite weight (DK, how I love you), so it's not total torture or anything, but I will be very glad when it's done.

I had a fair amount of time to spend knitting today, because I had to stay in the house for at least eight hours while the pudding steamed. The weather's been crappy, surprise, surprise, and while there are things I probably should be out and doing, I can't say I regretted losing a day of running around to quietly staying home, with husband and cats, in a house that smells of fir tree and spices. I like this life.

pudding

The whole Christmas season thing really hit me today, and I suddenly realised, hey, there's a lot of shit that needs to get done. Phil is likely on holiday until January, although he might have to work a couple of days next week, and once he's off for the year, it starts to really feel like oops, yeah, here's Christmas.

I went downtown and faced the gruesome crowds; for all the papers are screaming about sales being off, you'd never have known it from our shopping precinct today, because it was absolutely heaving. I managed to get one gift and scout out a couple others, so the trip wasn't totally wasted, but after about an hour, I'd had enough and went to Sainsbury's to buy the stuff to make the Christmas pudding. Last year I did a whole (stupid) photo essay about making the pudding, but it, like oh, FIVE YEARS OF MY LIFE, went poof with Diary-X, so I kind of had to wing it. I used Delia Smith's recipe as a guide, but because I sort of loathe dried currants, I reduced the amount to five ounces, and made up the difference with dried cranberries and cherries. I'm not exactly sure why I bothered, since all the dried and candied fruit in a Christmas pudding sort of melds into one big, sticky, yet oddly tasty indistinguishable mass of enamel-scorching stodge, but it will make me feel better about the whole thing to know I'm eating fewer nasty dried currants than I might otherwise. And since I'm the one making the pudding, it's all about me. I also cannot imagine what the hell I'd do with a bottle of barley wine minus 75ml needed for the pudding, so I bought green ginger wine instead, because that I can use.

So that stuff is glopping away peacefully on the kitchen counter overnight, and tomorrow I will put it in a greased basin and steam it for eight hours, then stick it out in the conservatory until Christmas Day, when we will steam it again, cover it with brandy, set the fucker alight, and then slather it in brandy butter and cream in order to eat it. It's way better than I make it sound, honest.

After mixing up the pudding, I baked a loaf of bread, wrapped some gifts, and considered starting on the cookies, but frankly, I'm not quite ready to start the major baking yet. I may mix up the cookie dough while the pudding steams tomorrow, and then stash it in the freezer for a few days, but that, too, might be a bit ambitious. It's not panic time quite yet on the cookie front, but it is getting damn close to panic time on the knitting and other gifting fronts, so I'm not being lazy, I am prioritizing. In fact, I am going to prioritize my way into a comfy chair with a glass of wine and my current knitting project right now.

a petty victory, maybe

Guess what arrived in the post today?

I put it together and spun it around, but my current project is being made from Louisa Harding's Grace, which comes in pre-wound balls, and thus has no need for a swift, so I have yet to properly use it. But I am looking forward to it. I am a simple, happy yarn geek, and my needs are few and usually made from all-natural materials.

Oh, I lie. It turns out there is quite a lot of stuff involved in feeding a fibre arts habit, but unlike, say, a smack habit, the stuff you need is perfectly legal. Even the hemp! Not that I've bought or used hemp yarn yet, because we are falling deep deep deep into crunchy granola hippie territory by even mentioning it, and anyway, as I have moaned about extensively before, plant fibres make my hands hurt. So no hemp, or at least not until I see some I like. It reminds me way too much of some of the truly obnoxious people I used to know back at university, people who loved to wear (ugly) clothing made from (scratchy) hemp, and who enjoyed telling anybody who could handle the body odor long enough to listen that Hemp is good stuff, man! It's so much better for the environment than cotton, man! And they are right, and I am totally on their side with the Legalize It! movement, but after the fiftieth time listening to the same lecture, I would find myself thinking, Dude, you're a burnout, and you really don't need to justify it to me, so enough already.

I'm pretty sure that's the first time I've used the word "burnout" in at least a decade, incidentally.

Anyway, in a petty triumph on the consumer rights front, I finally got a reply from Bodum, after one polite e-mail and one mildly irritated follow-up asking why they hadn't answered my first e-mail, and the reply was worth waiting for, because all I was really hoping was that I'd be allowed to purchase a new "unbreakable" carafe for my electric espresso maker, and instead, with absolutely no proof of purchase requested, they are sending me a brand new one next week, when they're back in stock. Now, assuming a) they really do send me a new one and, b) it doesn't disappear into the gaping, thieving maw of the Royal Mail, I will be one very, very happy little consumer. I'm already very pleased, because I actually did something about it, instead of, as usual, just assuming I was screwed, and because a company whose products I generally like very much has not ended up on my vindictive never-ever-again-I-hate-you shitlist without a chance to redeem themselves. This, all joking aside, is a really big step for me, because I am usually such a total wuss when dealing with stuff like this. I provisionally love you, Bodum, thank you for eventually trying to appease me. I look forward to being heavily overcaffeinated again very soon.

now with more crazy parenthetical asides

I am impatiently awaiting the arrival of my new yarn swift, and because the Royal Mail, which recently BOASTED of a 80% customer satisfaction rate (Only 20% of our customers want us to eat shit and die! We so rule!), has fucked me over twice this year by losing packages, the fact that it didn't arrive today, when all other things being equal, first class post should arrive the day after being sent, is making me nervous. And that 80% might sound OK, if, you know, everybody weren't totally dependent on them and their monopoly. But no! We are. And I proudly count myself in that 20% of their customers who poisonously hate them. Or maybe it's just because we're less than two weeks away from Christmas and they're really busy, I dunno. They have accrued no goodwill with me this year, so I am assuming the worst. They never even bothered to reply to my many, many complaints, either, the bastards.

And the worst part is that I got one of the last two swifts the place I ordered it from will have until after Christmas, so if it's lost or stolen, I am just plain screwed. But! It could just be the time of year, oh please, oh please, I want this swift so badly, and I want it now, and also I want the other stuff that was in my order, because I truly do need two of those balls of yarn like yesterday, so I can finish off a scarf I'm currently making. Which I then have to entrust to the...Royal Mail. See? They've got me coming and going, and I swear to god, I take back every mean thing I ever said about the USPS, because they never dicked me like this. They dicked me in tiny little ways that never included losing my packages twice in a two-month period. I can live with a lesser dicking, really. (Please, please give me my swift, Royal Mail!)

I will not feel silly for expressing my hatred and angst either, even if it does show up tomorrow (please oh please), because they do suck. They'll just suck slightly less if I get my package tomorrow.

rest

Our little town certainly does get bleak and ugly this time of year, so it's a good thing we've got all the fairy lights to distract us. I hate these short days, when the sun isn't properly up until after 8 am and it's back down by 4 pm. Roughly eight measly hours of sunlight a day, and it's not exactly quality sunlight, either. In fact, most days it rains, or at least it seems that way.

We still have a few hardy roses hanging on in the back garden, and whenever I happen to glance through the kitchen window, I see them and feel better. From a distance they're lovely and remind me of those glorious weeks in June and July when the garden just explodes with roses and sweet peas and lillies and jasmine and honeysuckle, and when we open up the conservatory windows and the French doors the fragrance is so strong and sweet it fills the whole house. When freshly washed white bedsheets hanging on the line reflect back that beautiful sunlight. The still, hot afternoons when the lavender is thick with honeybees, and the blackbird sits up on the uppermost peak of the rose and wisteria arch and sings out his claim to our garden.

Up close, of course, the roses look tatty and the garden smells of damp earth and leaf mould, and I need to remind myself that this season of quiet decay is inevitable and not a bad thing, it's just part of the cycle, and soon enough the first crocuses and snowdrops will be popping up and the days will be getting longer. The long nights are good for sleep.

bad appliance karma

So both of our overpriced coffeemakers are currently out of commission. I've got a service call on the fancy-ass Italian espresso maker, the most beautiful piece of REALLY BAD design you've ever seen, and I'm still waiting to see if Bodum will ever respond to my e-mail asking them how in the hell I can get a replacement for their unbreakable polycarbonate carafe, which broke on Thursday morning. A few months ago, I boxed up my old French press and buried it deep in the cupboard under the stairs, and can't find it. A Monday morning without coffee is not to be contemplated, and as I am so very tired of being burned by pricey coffeemakers, so I went out to Argos -- utter madness before Christmas -- and found a very cheap and ugly drip coffeemaker for the amazing low price of £4.99. I predict this coffemaker will never, ever die or give us a moment's trouble, which is why I passed on the extended three year warranty for £1.99:

Cashier: Would you like an extended warranty for only £1.99?
Me: On a five quid coffeemaker?
Cashier: Four ninety-nine, ma'am.
Me: I think I'll just go ahead an live dangerously, thanks.

God, I'm an asshole sometimes, but I don't buy extended warranties anymore, because when I do, it seems like whatever inevitably takes down my expensively warrantied appliance is the one thing the warranty doesn't cover. I think I just have bad appliance karma. The Italian Job does actually work OK, as long as you don't mind a a completely unreliable thermostat and some leakage, and the need to turn it off immediately after making a shot of espresso, because of that completely unreliable thermostat. It cost enough that it's probably worth fixing, and having a back-up drip coffeemaker for people who, unlike my husband and me, prefer a mellower cup of coffee, instead of the heart palpitations that come with five shots of espresso before noon.

Argos was horrible. I don't really like the place at the best of times, but it was a zoo today. I actually had to queue to use the electronic catalog, and then ages to get through the payment queue, where I charmed the doubtless very tired and stressed out clerk with my snotty riposte about the warranty, and then into the queue to pick up my cheapo coffeemaker. All told, about half an hour, and every minute of it was totally sucktastic.

But then I got to come home to this:



And this:



Flash loooooooves the Christmas decorations, and spends a lot of time making me nervous by looking as if he's going to eat them, although all he actually does is rub his cheek pads against them, while making munching noises. Forunately, he doesn't seem hugely interested in the tree, although it is a stop on his patrolling route. He stops, he sniffs, he moves on, unlike Pix, who enjoys sitting under the tree, just out of reach, and batting at the ornaments on the lower branches. The cheap, plastic ornaments on the lower branches, because I am on to her. She hasn't knocked one off yet, but she will. When she's determined to be irritating, nothing will stop her. Just like her mommy.

festive

We got the tree today, a seven-foot Noble Fir. After looking at practically every tree available at the nursery, I naturally managed to pick the one that sort of leans to one side. It also happened to be the prettiest one, so after propping up two of the tree stand's legs with a plank, it's mostly straight, and that's good enough for me. I was tired of wrestling with it at that point, and wanted to sit down and not think about Christmas trees for a few minutes. After letting it rest for a few hours, I decorated it, put up one more string of lights on the French windows that lead into the conservatory, swapped out a palm and an aspidistra for a couple of poinsettias, and pronounced the house decorated. I bought a wreath yesterday as well, only to discover that the super suction hook I bought wouldn't work on the outside of our front door, because of the leaded beading on the stained glass. It works on the inside well enough, though, so screw my neighbours' view of my house. It looks pretty in the entrance hall. It's so goddamn festive around here I can hardly stand it.

As a pleasant change to my usual experience when I get all the fairy lights out, none had mysteriously died over the course of the previous year. This is a first for us, since usually the decorating of the tree is delayed by my discovery that my lights don't work, the swearing because my lights don't work, and the debate about whether we can make it to the shops on time before they close to buy new lights that probably won't work when we get them home. (This has actually happened.) So I was fully prepared for the worst, considering that last year, instead of very carefully wrapping the lights up and putting them away in a safe place when we were done with them, I stuffed them into an old plastic carrier bag, and shoved them in the bottom of the ornament box, saying, at the time, that they weren't going to work when I got them out again, so why bother with the usual caution? Clearly, it pays to be lazy and careless, so I will make sure to do the same again this time.

So, all is well with the slightly-crooked tree, except the angel won't sit straight on the top, and even if we trim the tip of the tree, I don't think it's going to work this year. We started kicking around ideas for what else we can use in lieu of the angel (who looks very pretty sitting on the shelf just inside our front door), and I mentioned to Phil that Jennipur had Cthulu on top of her tree, and he immediately became madly jealous, because we have no Cthulu to spread tentacled holiday cheer and terror. So I'll be looking for something else, and if only I thought they'd arrive on time, I'd go for one of these, because what's more seasonal than the common cold or stomach ache?

what passes for thrills around here

This is how lame I am: I get ridiculously excited when I find out a yarn I've read a lot about, and seen used in many patterns, is going to become available in the UK. Like right now, Woolly Workshop is claiming they will soon have Mission Falls 1824 wool, and I am almost beside myself. I'm pretty sure this is just a very nice, basic yarn, so my excitement is all out of proportion to this news, but I'm thrilled anyway, if only because it means I won't necessarily have to substitute the yarn in some patterns I've liked. I'm all like Steve Martin in The Jerk, yelling, "The new phone books are here! The new phone books are here!"

The last time I was this excited about yarn was when Get Knitted started stocking Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride and Cascade 220. Perfectly ordinary, nice enough yarns, but there I was, getting stupid about it. I'm knitting the second of a pair of Fuzzy Feet right now with the Lamb's Pride, and sadly, it hasn't lived up to the ridiculous hype I created in my own mind. It's very nice. I'm sure it will felt beautifully. It's just yarn. My life is unchanged. I have yet to feel slightly let down by the Cascade, but I'm sure that day is coming. Koigu and Cherry Tree Hill and Lorna's Laces all totally lived up to my expectations, though. It is worth noting that these are all fairly expensive yarns, and I don't think I've yet encountered an expensive yarn I didn't love passionately. This does not surprise me in the slightest.

And all of this is just a lead-in to the latest heart-pounding thrill in my increasingly pathetic life: I'm about to order a swift. Over dinner tonight:

Phil: Blah blah blah, work, blah blah blah, new Nikon stuff, blah blah blah, enough about what I've been up to, what did you do while I was gone?
Me: Oh my god, I found two places selling swifts!
Phil: Huh? Birds?
Me: No! Yarn swifts!
Phil: Uh, knitting stuff, yes?
Me: Yes! Isn't that exciting?
Phil: Oh, certainly, yes, very exciting.
Me: You have no idea.
Phil: No, I'm sure I don't.

My husband, the terminal phlegmatic. Fortunately, he's cute, and even more fortunately, he has an obsessive hobby as well so even if he doesn't quite get what we refer to as 'the yarn thing' around here, he's agreeable enough about it for a man who is in imminent danger of losing wardrobe space to my stash.

admission

I'm in the middle of my first candy cane of the season, and feeling somewhat relaxed, for the first time in about a week. My dad had some sort of bad reaction to some medication he's on, resulting in what looked like, to my panicked mother, a stroke, so he went in for an EEG late last week, and it came back fine: no stroke, no seizure, no brain tumour, none of the ten million things I've been using Dr. Google to torture myself with. Bad reaction, the doctor is adjusting his meds, and now maybe I can stop worrying until the next crisis. He had a very mild stroke last year, so we're edgy about these things, mom and me. I hope she's feeling better, too. Her latest e-mail sounded perky enough.

Phil's still away, and won't be back until tomorrow night. I haven't told him I've got the Christmas lights up, since it'll be a nice surprise for him that way. He told me how much he loves coming home from business trips this time of year, and seeing the house all lit up and welcoming, and frequently smelling of lovely things to eat. I'm pretty sure he appreciates the beer in the fridge, as well. I did the grocery shopping today, so everything is ready for a nice weekend, without the need for one of us to run out and get something. I'm not sure what we're going to do this weekend, other than get the tree on Saturday, and I'll probably make the Christmas pudding on Sunday, but we're not anywhere near the oh-my-god-must-hurry point, so a relatively lazy weekend sounds great to me, especially if I can fit in some knitting time, because I am sort of getting near the oh-my-god-must-hurry point with that. I had to basically take a week off from knitting, due to some fairly severe pain in my wrists and shoulders, which, as it turns out, probably wasn't caused by knitting, but by the crappy chair I sit in to use my computer. Chairs are easier to replace than wrists and shoulders, so this is good news. Phil's been after me for a while to get a decent desk chair, and I've blithely ignored him, so while seeing me struck down by pain for my arrogance isn't exactly satisfying to him, he does enjoy pointing out that he was right all along, so there. So for the record, I do hereby state that my husband was RIGHT and I was WRONG.

He'll probably print that out and keep it forever.

because it makes me happy

On New Year's Eve last year, I cast on for my first sweater:



I didn't think I could do it, but I was going to try anyway. I had never knit anything more complicated than a hat and one lousy mitten at that point. I was wrong; I did it, and it wasn't even that hard. Since then, I have made six sweaters; three cardigans, three pullovers. OK, two of them were baby sweaters, but still, that's, on average, one sweater every two months. I've also made socks, gloves, more mittens, a blanket, a lace scarf, baby booties, and many other things I can't remember right now, as it's been a long, busy day, I am tired, and I have maybe had a drink or two. I have a huge stash of yarn, a gigantic vase full of needles, a shelf full of knitting books, and a couple of drawers full of knitting sundries. I keep them in my little pink office that looks out over our street, where I have marked the change of the seasons with the Victoria plum tree in my neighbour's yard, in this whole year I've been learning this craft.

I bought a darning mushroom today, because those socks were hard-won, and my husband has an uncanny ability to wear holes in lovingly hand-knit socks at an astonishing pace. I am not throwing them away. I am not possessive of the things I knit; I give most of them away. But I am protective. I knit with love and care. I am the best person I can be when I am knitting something for somebody I love, and for all my moaning about the inflexibility of cotton and the ache in my shoulders and wrists, I do not regret or resent a moment spent knitting. I have met some really wonderful people through knitting. I have knitted my way through depression and worry and a lot of happiness as well, and it's all been good for me, and good for the people I love.

I think this hobby is going to stick.

sparkly

I started getting out the Christmas decorations this evening, and naturally, one of the boxes was at the very bottom of the huge pile of crap in my guest room. My all-but-unusable-guestroom-please-god-nobody-visit-very-soon, that is. The cats have mostly taken that room over, anyway, and the guest bed duvet is covered thickly with cat hair. We are pure class around here. We have some vague notion of cleaning that room out over the holiday break (Phil has a couple of weeks of holiday time to use up) and making it into a guestroom-cum-office for him, since the crappy room in the back of the house he's been using for an office would make a much better storage room, and anyway, it'd be nice to have our respective offices on the same floor of the house, so we might actually talk to each other more frequently. As it currently stands, we both tend to get busy and absorbed, and hours can go by without us communicating at all. This isn't a marriage problem or anything, it'd just be kind of nice to be able to talk to each other without having to traverse the entire house, since our offices are as physically distant from each other as it's possible to be, while still being in the same building. Laziness has, on at least one occasion, compelled me to call him on my mobile rather than get off my big lazy arse. We're also thinking of putting a sofa on the landing (our uppermost landing is huge) so we could make it into more of a social space. We get beautiful light up on the landing, and there are four big bookcases within a few feet, so it'd make a great place to splodge out and read.

This is all a very great idea, but we'll have to see if we can shake off our annual holiday break sloth long enough to actually do it.

Anyway, I got the decorations out today mostly because while I was out earlier, I was strongly tempted to buy a few more things, and was only able to stop myself by deciding I needed to look at what we already had first. Every year, I go a little bit further over the top with the Xmas decorations, although I do confine my decorative jollity to the interior of the house itself, and refrain from putting crap out on our front lawn, or anything like that. Except this year I hung some lights on the big windows in the front hall, but they're tasteful little white lights, I swear.

I usually only decorate the front hall, the staircase and the dining room, but I think I'm going to make my first incursion into the sitting room this year. We put our tree in the front hall because that's where it looks best, and there's enough space for it without having to move a bunch of other stuff, but that also means that when we're in the sitting room, we have no tree to look at. I am not mad enough to put up more than one tree, but I am, in my dotage, getting obsessive enough about the Christmas decorating that I'm happy enough to suck another room into the swirling vortex of tacky my house becomes in December. I've given up. I'm not even trying to maintain an ironic front any longer. I love the sparkly red-and-green-and-goldness of it all, and I don't care who knows it.

I crack and talk about knitting

Could somebody please explain to me who is knitting all these hideous fun fur and eyelash yarn shrugs? And perhaps more importantly, who is wearing them, other than the same few models in, oh, practically every single issue of Knitting magazine I have ever purchased? All of whom look like they're wearing luridly coloured gorilla suits, minus the heads? And while you're at it, please explain why the hell I keep buying this sorry piece of crap magazine, because I sure don't know.

This was their Christmas Glitz! issue, so I had no excuse for being surprised, I guess, but yeesh, it was even worse than I expected. Not only was it cover-to-cover eyelash yarn horrors and vile cutesy-twee crap, but there was a definite emphasis on that Glitz! thing, because most of it was sparkly. Oh, I can just imagine how good that tinsel-and-acrylic blend feels against the skin. You might as well be wearing Christmas tree garland. I mean, I can sort of see why some people might like the odd, reasonably restrained eyelash yarn scarf, but a cross-over bolero? Yeah, exactly the kind of figure-flattering thing I want to wear to a Christmas party.

Still, it did help me kill fifteen minutes while waiting for my coffee, but this time I mean it: I'm not buying it again. And if you think I'm being picky, you should've read the letter to the editor from the crazy guy who had a list of demands for how the models should pose to best display the garment from every angle, the better to help him decide what he wanted to knit. Dude. It's a knee-length novelty yarn cardigan. It's a horror. There are no good angles.

Anyway, other than getting taken for £3.45, yet again, it's been an OK sort of day. Phil is off on business, so I'll have the house to myself for a couple of days, and with any luck, I won't be struck down by laziness, and manage to get some work done. We're getting the tree on Saturday, and I'd like to get the rest of the holiday decorating done before we get it. We've been eating our way through the stuff in the freezer so I will have room to make up cookie dough in advance and stash it, so maybe I can have a slightly less exhausting seasonal baking frenzy this year. It would be good if this time I remember to label the stuff going into the freezer, so I won't have the troubles I had this week, when I mistook the ciabatta dough for pizza dough and the ham stock for chicken stock. It wasn't a disaster or anything; the pizza was just a little puffier than usual, and the ham stock didn't ruin the risotto, but I got pissed off at myself both times anyway, because it's just stupidity and laziness on my part.

I'm sure my Christmas spirit will arrive with the tree. I sound all grumpy, but I will buck up once the house is looking pretty and there are cookies to eat.

into the woods

The weather here today has been absolutely dreadful, so naturally, we decided to go for a nature hike through Storeton Wood. Normally, I don't really do nature. I show my appreciation for it, and desire to see it preserved from harm best by staying out of it. But, hey, sometimes you have gale-force winds and occasional bursts of extremely cold rain, and this strikes your spouse as ideal weather for a nice walk, so you tell yourself it's a fine excuse for breaking out that cute hat you knitted last winter, and it! will! be! fun!

And actually, it was. It was windy and wet, but not all that cold; I was certainly comfortable enough with my hat and a light, waterproof jacket over a cotton turtleneck, especially since we were walking briskly over uneven ground. There was a bit of misunderstanding between us at first, since we were shouting at each other to be heard over the roar of the wind (and I am not exaggerating even a tiny bit about that roar) but once we figured that out, we relaxed and had a really good time, wandering about, taking photos, exchanging greetings with the other people insane enough to be out in the woods in a gale, and trying very hard not to calculate the odds of a tree falling on us. At one point shortly after entering the woods, we stopped to fiddle with our cameras, and were interrupted by a very loud CRACK, causing us to look up into the trees to see which one was about to crush us, and then look at each other and laugh slightly hysterically. I strongly considered demanding we go home, but then I looked over to my right, through the trees, and saw this:



Sheep! I love sheep, source of my beloved wool. So I forgot all about imminent death, swaying in the wind above our heads, and went down to take a couple of pictures of the sheep, who were not even slightly bothered by the stormy conditions, or the madwoman behind the fence, taking pictures of them. Phil was immensely patient with my ridiculous delight in a bunch of, let's face it, profoundly stupid animals.

Eventually I was persuaded to stop trying to get the sheep to look at me, and we carried on down the path, running into more crazy people and friendly dogs, and god, there is nothing that makes me want to add a dog to our family more than seeing happy mutts out running around in the woods, obviously enjoying themselves. Our very enjoyable walk would've been at least twice as much fun if we'd had a dog along with us. We carried on along the edge of the woods, looking out over the very pretty, if somewhat austere farmland of the Wirral:





And then near a very typical for this area country lane:



Before walking deeper into the woods, to go out the other side, because my god, the wind was getting terrible. We came back out near a really good little country pub, where we had a couple of pints, which may have been a mistake on my part, because I forgot to eat breakfast, and a pint of cider on an empty stomach quickly put an end to the day's adventure. I was fine, just in absolutely no condition to walk home through increasingly foul weather, so we called a taxi and went home in comfort. I really am glad I overcame my natural slothfulness and went out, because it reminded me of exactly why we left London, and why, in spite of the usual lack of big city excitement, we live here.

as yet unmoved by the holiday spirit

It's been one of those useless Saturdays. I mean, I got a lot done, but not nearly as much as I'd hoped to do. For once, I got up fairly early, bathed, baked a loaf of bread, did a little bit of knitting, and ran some errands, but seriously, I do not know where the time went. Yes, there might possibly have been a nap in there, but it was a late-afternoon nap, when the useful part of the day was long gone, since it gets dark at four these days.

The shopping precinct, where I very unfortunately had to go to get Phil some Euros for his trip to Germany next week, was scary busy. Since we don't have Thanksgiving over here, for obvious reasons, I'm starting to think our equivalent of Black Friday is the first Saturday in December. The bellringers and charity baggers are all out, and while I'm perfectly happy to chuck some change in their buckets, please, people who are bagging for charity, don't help me. I will pay you not to help me, no please stop putting my stuff in that plastic bag, I've brought my own bags, and I like to pack them myself, no, god, don't put the bottle of wine on top of the tomatoes....OH FOR GOD'S SAKE, HERE'S A QUID. GO AWAY. And yes, I know I'm being a bitch, but since I have started carrying my own cloth bags, the enormous pile of useless plastic carrier bags in my pantry has slowly been beaten back to a reasonable and useful amount, and I like it that way. Good for the environment, good for my sanity, good for my unbruised tomatoes, good for the circulation in my fingers, since I no longer have to suffer the pain of plastic handles, stretched by the weight of the bag to thin, wiry strings capable of breaking the skin.

Once I got everything done, and got to sit down in the decent coffee shop near the taxi queue, though, things improved, because that place is the best for people-watching. I can sit there, knit, drink coffee, and judge the poor fashion choices and parenting of my fellow Wirrallians. The fact that I was wearing a pair of yoga pants and a long-sleeved tshirt in public and I have no kids in no way stops me from this unkind self-indulgence, because I can always reassure myself that A) my yoga pants and t-shirt are clean and well-fitting, with nary a hint of exposed belly flab and butt-crack, B) I might be a terrible mother otherwise, but I'm pretty sure if my kid were spitting on people, I would at least apologise profusely and take him home before beating him, and C) I have no kids to embarrass by wearing yoga pants in public.

But the real reason the coffee shop is such a joy at this time of year, other than the coffee and the sitting down, is that it is directly across from our very small, seasonal ice skating rink. I'm from Michigan. I know ice. These folks are from the generally mild and usually ice-free northwest coast of England. They don't even put enough ice in their Diet Cokes. Watching them try to ice skate is interesting, to say the least. The skaters were mostly kids, mostly mean, and mostly having a good time, trying to push each other into the rink walls. This view, while not pretty, at least provided the second-best reminder of the day as to why I am so very glad I'm not a kid anymore, because, trust me, I'd have been one of the kids getting shoved into the wall. The best reminder, of course, was the bottle of wine we had with dinner. I may not be as limber as I used to be, but at least I can drink decent wine.

december? already?

I'm pretty sure I just finished taking the tree down like last week.

This has been a year when a significant number of my friends have had babies, concluding with two born this week. I have been churning out booties and cardigans at a steady clip, which is fun, because they're tiny and quick, and there's nothing I enjoy more than imposing my taste upon innocent newborns too tiny to stand up and assert their right to cartoon character embossed t-shirts, which I irrationally loathe. They've all been boys, though, and I selfishly want somebody, anybody to have a girl, because I have a really great matinee coat pattern I am dying to knit. (Well, somebody, anybody I like well enough to knit for.) Dear friends: Your babies are just vehicles for my handknits. Take pictures. Itchy-kitchy-coo.

The latest baby arrived in Paris, to one of Phil's oldest friends. A.'s a nice guy, but imagining him as a father, when I know way too much about his, er, history, is kind of difficult. When we heard the news he'd got married, a couple of years ago, there was a long moment when we just sat there, looking at each other and blinking. Finally, P broke the stunned silence by observing, "Well, now I know how my friends felt when I told them we were getting married." All the same, he's happy and appears to be excited about fatherhood, even if his friends are going to think it's all an elaborate joke until he shows us some photos, and possibly the results of a DNA test.

I'm actually all on the ball this year, and my gift-making and -buying is going according to schedule. I've got two things to make that need to get across the ocean in time for the holidays, and I think I just might make it. I'm knitting my father a pair of slippers, and I hit Google to find out what his shoe size translates to in inches. As it turns out, in his case, shoe size translates pretty directly to inches, so yay, that's going to be easy. I typed "american men's shoe size in inches," into Google, and bang! First hit gives me a chart. Very good. Of course, the second hit was "Shoe Size - Penis Size Conversion Charts," which is really not the kind of connection I care to make when it comes to my Dad, but thanks anyway, Google. It's always good to get confirmation of my belief that whatever the subject, SOMEBODY will create an obsessively detailed web page about it. This one is apparently supposed to be humourous, and when I was twelve, I doubtless would've found it hilarious, so it's just a shame that I'm older than the hills and there was no WWW back then.

And now I know how my parents felt when I was amazed that TV was brand new when they were kids. Phil and I actually had a conversation about this the other night. He's seven years older than me, but still was born well into the age of television, and he can remember when they only had BBC1 and ITV, and then only for relatively few hours a day. So if you were home sick, after the morning's grim social engineering educational programming, you had the option of reading a book, or watching the test card. The test card was apparently more diverting than one of the six or so cheap-ass documentaries they had on rotation, the only one of which he could recall was "The History of Paint," which he estimated he'd seen at least 150 times.

"That sounds really kind of horrible," I told him.
"At least I was born after rationing ended," he replied.

Thus ended the evening's cultural exchange.