breispace

Seven weeks of glorious summer vacation. The gods know I needed it. This year I went to England and Wales with Kees for ten days. We had reservations for a car at John Lennon airport (great slogan) and got upgraded to a brand new VW Jetta Turbo Diesel because ours wasn’t ready.

The first days we went to Chester, Snowdonia (which was absolutely beautiful) and Portmeirion (which was a bit unreal because nobody actually really lives there). At the end of the third day Kees’ friend Geoff and his lovely wife Sarah put us up for a night and took us to dinner at a v nice pub.

We skipped Devon and Cornwall because the weather was going to be bad there. Instead we headed for London, visiting the White Horse of Uffington on the way. Within a mile after leaving the horse’s parking lot our gearbox blew up, and we were eventually towed back to Bristol Airport. This took the best part of the day, the upside of which was that I got a lot of knitting done.

London was excellent, and so was the weather. I indulged in some retail therapy at the British Museum, and bought a miniature Lewis chessmen set and a cookbook. We had excellent sushi (much cheaper than in A’dam) and other healthy foods. We enjoyed the splendid hospitality of Bryan,  Helma and Freki for three days, after which it was time to move on because “Guests and fish stay fresh for three days only”.

We stayed in Cambridge for one night (lovely free archeological/anthropological museum), and in York for two (scored some hand-painted Araucania sock yarn ((not to be confused with Araucana)) at “Sheepish”, yay!) and wallowed in  culture, history and Beef-and Stilton pasties.

After that we were quite close to Manchester, our final stop, where my friend Steve had arranged a room for us. We took the long route via the (again, beautiful) Yorkshire Dales and stopped for some Wensleydale in Hawes. I had a Yorkshire rarebit for lunch, also made with the local cheese of course. After settling in at the hotel we had a Balti dinner and a few pints with Steve and did some catching up. Good craic.

Our last day was a Sunday and our flight wasn’t until the evening, so we went to the Peak district for some more stunning landscapes. In Bakewell we had their famous pudding and visited a craft fair in aid of the local Scouts, and I spent my last pounds on various embroidery paraphernalia at a big car boot sale. Kees looked around for old cameras and militaria but didn’t find anything he liked. The flight home was uneventful and I was back home around midnight, welcomed by purring pookies.

About to enter the last week of my vacation, which will mostly have to be spent on prepping. I’ve been a bit of a recluse this summer, and I must say I’m reluctant to get back to work and studies. My work is interesting and seldom boring, and I am slowly but surely getting better at it, but there’s many a weekend when I’m not looking forward to jumping back into the fray. Fray being the key word here; I don’t like stress. My Mondays off are gone for the coming semester too, meaning I’ll have to both prep and study on the weekend. until now I always managed to keep one day of the week devoid of work- and study-related things, but that’s going to require even tighter planning now. I don’t know how I’m going to pull that off yet. If I won the lottery now I seriously think I’d retire and find ways to spend my time that would be both useful, less stressful, and more fun.

Okay, enough with the gloom. I did do some fun things this week. For one, I finished the Arrowheads jumper/sweater/jersey/pullover and the pink scarf (can’t show that pic yet, sorry) for my colleague. Two Olympic goals achieved, yay!

I also harvested and partly processed the flax. first, I had to make a ripple to separate the seed-buds and leaves from the stalks:

then I rippled (combed, sort of) the stalks. Now they’re lying in the back of the garden, retting (a fancy name for letting the woody bits rot). Marion may have to finish the processing later.

I invented a new liquid breakfast: very filling. The recipe:
- about a handful of blackberries or other tasty fruit;
- 2-3 heaped tablespoons of crushed porridge oats or Weetabix;
- liquid or powdered sweetener to taste.
Blend thoroughly with yoghurt (up to 1 litre) and keep in the fridge until hungry.

According to this BBC programme calcium helps to pass some fat through the body undigested, and blending your food to a soup with water will help you to ward off hunger pangs for longer than just having a glass of water with your food does. Plain water passes through the stomach very quickly because there are no nutrients in it, and so it hardly expands the stomach, which is what makes you feel less hungry. Conclusion (unless you want to eat goo every day): have a glass of low-fat milk with your meal. I may try that for lunch at work, or even on the tea-break.

I always love it when dragonflies visit my garden. One of my neighbours has a pond, although she doesn’t maintain it. Which is good: wildlife usually doesn’t (don’t?) like manicured gardens. My excuse for leaving things a bit of a mess in places.  Maybe the brown frog will stop by tomorrow.

For those of you still not familiar with that addictive knitters’ online dwelling that is Ravelry, look here. As the Olympic Games have begun, so have the Ravelympics, and I decided to enter all my WIPs by way of a big stick (behind the door). The event is called WIPswrestling, and the idea is to have all my WIPs finished by the closing ceremony on the 24th. I’ve been invited to the Oddball group (Rav link) and I’ve also joined Team Hopelessly Overcommitted (dito). The fanclub is in position and ready to assist.

The weeks of my summer vacation are slipping like very dry sand through my fingers. It’s an enormous luxury not having to get up at the crack of dawn, taking time over coffee, not taking my shower before ten, letting breakfast slip into brunch, etc. etc. I try to spend some time on the to-do-list every day, leaving the rest for knitting, friends and other pastimes. For instance, I’ve (re-)created some storing space:

My nails have never been this long. They’re going to have to be cut down to normal proportions because I want to throw some viking cups and bowls next week (no, not that kind of throwing; this kind involves clay and a potter’s wheel).

Last week’s film: I went to see Hancock with Nantko. I give it one thumb up. Interesting plot twists, but most of the characters were a bit flat. Drinks at Mulligans afterwards, of course.

This week’s film: Wall-E , this time with Kees, and preceded by Japanese food at “Tempura”. Two thumbs up this time, very funny. An animated sci-fi rom-com; three genres for the price of one. I really liked the name of the mega-corporation responsible for the total pollution of planet Earth: Buy n Large. A good pun on mega-consumerism and on destroying the world by and by. Kees’ report and t-shirt of the day here.

Summer vacation is finally here for me. Seven weeks of blissful nothingness. Nooooht! There’s the To Do list, for instance:

• finish the dreaded POP (I’m trying to get that done this week);
• do my taxes (over the last two years; that should bring in a few Euri);
• muck out the house (stuff is stacking up all over the place, making me look and feel like a compulsive hoarder sometimes);
• find and visit a new dentist (haven’t been in a year or two; there goes the tax money);
• write a couple of book reviews for Keramiek magazine.

Speaking of stuff: another potential new hobby has been added to the stack. Two weeks ago it was my dad’s 75th birthday, and apart from a present for him one of my aunts also brought something for me: a four-shaft weaving loom. I’ll try to put a pic up next time, when it’s no longer crowding the bedroom. I was planning to store it in the shed for now but couldn’t get it through my tiny narrow kitchen, so it’ll have to wait until I’ve mucked out the bedroom or workroom. I had borrowed a van for the occasion, and took the opportunity to go by the garden centre to get some willow screens to cover up the fugly fence my neighbour put up years ago from leftover planks (take a breath here). You can still see a bit of it on the right. I’ll have to do some demolition before I can negotiate the second screen behind the invisible tree to the right from there. The little cage doesn’t contain bird food but camel hair, for birds with late nesting aspirations.

Other things in the garden: the rocket is starting to bloom so I’ll have to do some weeding there; also blooming is M’s flax. I hope she lets me know when it’s time to harvest the stuff and what to do with it next.

Knitting-wise I’m in a finishing mood, although I’ve also started a few small new projects (and finished one within two days, so that doesn’t really count, does it?). The 2nd project will have to remain a secret in case the colleague I’m knitting it for reads my blog. It involves light pink Merino, ’s all I’m saying. The in-between project was an orange cabled case for my reading specs, made with a reflective biking arm-band for inner reinforcement and some of my mum’s vintage cotton for the lining.

Also finished: the v-neck pullover (although I’m thinking of adding a few more cms to the sleeves…).

I copied Andy B’s trick (from EZ if I remember correctly?) for disguising the colour changes in the ribbing: worked a treat! It goes like this: if you change the colour in ribbing and you don’t want the little specks of the previous colour to show in the purl stitches, all you have to do is knit the entire 1st row of the new colour and then continue in ribbing. Totally invisible!

A few weeks ago Kees sent me a link to despair.com, a site that sells self-depreciating wares with pessimistic and down-putting slogans. Very funny. He asked if I saw anything I liked and I replied in the affirmative, and the next thing I know he’d ordered it for me. It came in a cheerful little box, with a text on the back warning me in advance that the company had lawyers and was not afraid to use them.

Inside was a new mug for my tea:

On the other side it says “pessimist’s mug”. In fact I seldom fill it above the mark, because it’s heavy and half of my tea would go cold if I did. It’s a good mug, I like using it. Kees gave it to me because the order was sort of an accident. Sweet, eh?

At school, the end of term didn’t go by without a glitch: we couldn’t get into the building on Thursday because the renovators had done something wrong with the asbestos removal and the whole building had to be closed off, air samples had to be taken, the final meetings had to take place in another building about one km away, etc. After all that could be done was done I had about four hours to kill, and I decided to visit the Ethnology Museum to see the departments I had missed the last time I was there. After that I did some window shopping (and bought shoes), until it was time to have a lovely dinner with my English dept. colleagues at Delphi, a very good local Greek restaurant. Good times and food were had by all. When I got home there was an email from the Head, informing me that no asbestos particles had been found in the air and we could all get back in to finish everything we needed to finish before the promotion (or not) ceremonials on Friday.

Yesterday M, Kees and me went to a small Irish music festival in Deventer, organised by the incredible, scuse me legendary Mark Gilligan. Kees has blogged about it extensively, so I won’t bother. All I might add is that I added about a handwidth to a sock during the gigs and worked on my colleague’s present on the train. Good weather, lovely town; I’ll get back there some day I’m sure.