Skip to main content

Finishing. Starting.

Finished: Book

photos for blogThe Circle by Dave Eggers.


I thoroughly enjoyed And you shall know our velocity by Dave Eggers, so when my work friend Nick was reading this I asked if I could borrow it.

I tend to read borrowed books faster than my own as I feel the impetus to return them before they get lost in my piles of book. I had no trouble finishing this and found it compelling from the start.

I won't say much about the plot (I hate spoilers and hardly ever read the blurb on the back of books which seem to give away half the plot) but it starts with a young woman leaving her dull hometown job to work at a googlesque company, Circle.

I work in digital communication which may have piqued my interest but if you use the internet (and here you are dear reader), you should read this. Heck, I'm not even sure I should be blogging after reading this book.






Started: Allotment 2014



photos for blog We headed to our strip of land on Saturday.

Most of the work was wedding, pulling up an excess of strawberry and anise plants which had continued to spread through the mild winter.

I also admired the bare stems such as these wintered chive heads.

However there was some bounty. Red chicory, a turnip, lettuce and Jerusalem artichokes had grown well and were ready for the eating.














Finished: Chicory and lettuce

photos for blog
















Started: Garden

We now have a small garden all to ourselves. It's pretty unkempt at the mo and there are some minor jobs such as weeding and pruning as well as the possibility of total overhaul. The brickwork is pretty crumbly and I'm not keen on the paving stones. There's a fair bit of work to do in our new place too, so we'll see which gets done first.


photos for blog

Started: hot sauce

photos for blog

Hot sauce recipe. I've made this before. Scotch bonnets are a pretty fierce chili (hence the gloves on the left) but they mellow into a tasty, zingy, sauce with this recipe from Epicurious. Stage one involves roughly blending the ingredients and letting them ferment for at least 12 hours. I'll finish the sauce tomorrow evening.


Almost finished?

photos for blogAnd finally, knitting!

Of course, it's socks.

These have turned out to be pretty international. I bought the Norweigan yarn (Drops) in Sweden before Christmas. Cast on in Ecuador, knitting a bit more on my flight home via the USA - including a stop in Atlanta to see my in-law in laws - knitted some more in France, and almost finished them in Yorkshire last weekend. I've got one more toe to do, then they're off to my mum (back to Yorkshire) for Mother's Day.

Pattern: Into the Groove
Designer: Knittingtastic
Yarn: Drops something or other 4ply
Needle: 2.25mm (my first socks on chiagoos, mmmm, so smooth)

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

We have a winner...

Check out my pea seedling, how intact and un-nibbled it is. My mysterious object, as correctly guessed by Madmurdock and Montyknits, is a gastropod guard. It seems to be working. I'd heard that slugs and snails don't like slithering over hair. I tried using hair clippings a few years ago as a barrier. It worked for a few days, til I found chewed, leafless stems and on further inspection a guilty slug covered in ginger hair. Hopefully the fleecy barrier will stay in place and mean I get a good late crop of peas. Congratulations to the winners and thank you to everyone who took part.
4 comments
Read more

Champagne Bubbles

We went for a stroll this afternoon along the Seine where my MIL lives to work off the champagne and cheese from New Year celebrations and build up an appetite for our postponed Christmas meal. It was a good opportunity to take some photos of my latest FO, Bubbles hat by Woolly Wormhead . Compulsory Catalogue Pose I've met Woolly at several shows over the summer and we sat together at several meal times at the infamous Knit Camp as well as getting tipsy at Knit Nation. She's ace and also a great designer. She leads a pretty interesting life, living in a converted double decker bus in Italy. Take a look at her blog which is a good mixture of her day to day life on the bus with her partner and young son and loads of great knitting tips. The Bubbles pattern was great fun to knit and worked up pretty quickly, the cables providing just enough interest to make this a great knit while watching Agatha Christie mysteries on TV in between eating festive leftovers. I used Araucan...
1 comment
Read more

TOTOROOOOOOOO!

I finally handed over the Totoro hooded top to it's two year old recipient today. It also fits his four year old sister which is good as she likes Totoro too. They both looked very cute in it. We met up at the Wellcome Collection which has a lovely airy cafe and free exhibitions. The Totoro kids mum is a fellow scientist so we went round the Exquisite Bodies exhibition explaining why calves are sometimes born with two heads, how babies are made (the four year olds current interest) and lots of other science fun to the kids. If you visit the Wellcome centre with kids ask about their young investigators pack. It's really cool (I was disappointed I didn't get one) and it's free. Brilliant. The staff were really helpful and pleasantly surprised at seeing young kids enjoying a strange exhibition, rather than being freaked out by it. Personally, I did enough human dissection as part of my degree to make me not want to see another cadaver ever again, although the models wer...
4 comments
Read more