moo make it!

chick lit

2011-04-24T10:38:00.000-07:00

yes! it's the return of an old easter tradition, the homemade hen. a hen, a rooster and a clutch of chicks, that is. i had an eager four-year-old to cheer me on, and prepare feet and tails, which meant three chicks saw the light of day this year.

as we also went on holiday to a cottage well-supplied with light-hearted fiction, i can add that there's also been some reading of chick lit this easter. a new tradition? the usual thing is crime, but, well, the two can easily be combined.

cut off

2011-04-06T09:23:00.000-07:00

i tend not to go in for cut flowers, preferring potted plants or flowers that are still attached to the earth outside. it seems such a waste, something that is cut off and won't grow anymore, or fruit.

but in the case of the narcissus, i made an exception. the first one broke when one of the little mad people (or beasts) of the house ran over it, possibly with a bike. it was broken clean off, so i prolonged its life by bringing it indoors, in a vase, to delight all the knights of the dinner table.

then another one just lay down and kissed the ground. i don't know why, maybe it had given up hope, or maybe it just wanted to get back to its roots. anyway, slugs started eating the petals, so i thought it would be a waste to leave it. and in it came.

finally, there was a big storm. garden furniture flew away and fences collapsed. the long-stemmed narcissus didn't stand a chance. they were all lying flat in the dirt when the wind subsided.

so i took them all in, and they brightened the day, just like the blown-off magnolia flower, the LEGO tower, the mad dog in his bounciness, and my flowery cup of tea.

happy spring!

crop'd

2010-11-01T10:00:00.000-07:00

it's time to see what mother nature has given us in all her bounty this year. first, may i present:

what? well, it's a bowlful of earth from my very own compost. i've never really lived for long enough in one place -- with a compost -- to have been able to produce lovely soil. but this year, i have. hopefully this will help me grow slightly bigger veggies next year, as well.

my little potato darlings! see the skull-like one in the lower left corner? that's my favourite. these are all the offspring of a mother potato i planted in a tall red pot. as the pot was small, they didn't have much room to grow. the skull potato was scrunched up against the pot wall and some pebbles. hopefully, it will make more potatoes -- sinister or normal -- next year.

apart from the potatoes, i didn't have much luck with my vegetables this year. i tried to grow cauliflower, and the plants did flower, but in a highly underwhelming manner. the cauliflower on each was as big as a new potato. i left it on the plant, hoping it would grow some more, but instead got bitter cauli. next year i'll make sure they get more light. what i did get, though, was a suprise:

these are grapes! in the north of england! the vines crept over from our neighbours' garden. not all of them managed to ripen, but some did. i think i may have to take a cutting...

all packed

2010-08-10T04:47:00.000-07:00

it's summertime, it's teuncy travel time, and there are those of us who like to travel with our electronic thingamajings. here is a matching set (eek!) i made for my mac and ipod, out of a checkered shirt that was too tight and a bit of curtain. the fortunate new use made the loss of the shirt bearable.

two in one

2010-06-29T10:42:00.000-07:00

i solved the laundry problem and provided my daughter with a fun activity.

this last winter, we suffered from slow-drying laundry syndrome. the indoors clothes horse, after it collapsed, had been very nicely hung on a wall at the end of our long kitchen. unfortunately, that spot seemed to be where all moisture gathered, and so each load of laundry took about a decade to dry.

i was therefore very much looking forward to being able to use the garden for drying again. unfortunately, i'd done some "landscaping" which meant the line i'd used earlier was out of commission. a new one would have to be put up, preferably along the length of the house. but how? would i have to drill holes, pour concrete, or plant a super-fast tree to support the line?

as it turned out, our favourite hardware shop turned out to have clothesline supporters in stock. i bought one of these contraptions without any idea of how it might work, hoping i'd magically figure it out.

and here's the thing -- i did! i fastened the line at two (rather low) points, propped it up with the metal pole, which has a neat and functional extending system, and we had a working clothesline. full of clothes, it makes a pleasing, slowly swinging motion, like the crocodiles of Asterix. my daughter put the line to immediate use as a giant swinging toy, and she's been hard at work emptying the washing machine ever since.

this is cake

2010-02-20T13:39:00.000-08:00

we had to make cake for fundraising. my husband beats the fluffiest egg foam, so he set himself in charge of actually baking the cake, while i got to decorate it. since he usually shrugs off icing, claiming it is for penguins. also, as we hadn't made anything for sale before, we decided to make two cakes, just in case.

this turned out to be a very good idea. the big, round cake rose beautifully, brown and plump and yummy-looking in every way. icing it, however, was no plain sailing. the cake was a little rounded at the top, so we cut off that bit. then i poured the icing on.

poured? yes. the icing was a little too runny for its own good. we had used an entire miniature bottle of coffee liqueur for it. this, mixed with some icing sugar, formed a lellow liquid which seeped into the cake, giving it a great taste, but a distinctly forlorn look.

luckily, there had been enough batter for two cakes. the other, a heart-shaped one, was smaller and thinner. however, we didn't feel the need to cut anything off it. and we only needed a little bit of icing to cover it. this time, i used a few drops of cold coffee which i mixed into lots of icing sugar. yay! off-white icing which would stay exactly where i wanted it.

of the two, the first cake was probably yummier. that's the one we kept and ate in nomitude. the second one, however, really took the cake at the fundraising cafe. they all hearted it.

plantlings

2010-01-24T16:06:00.000-08:00

eagle-eyed and elephant-minded readers may have noticed i have made no mention of my enormous crops this year. this is because, erm, they're not quite finished yet. blame the poor soil or a confused climate, the cauli refused to flower and the carrots remained carrotlets.

to save them from certain destruction (and boy, was i glad for that when The Snow came!), i decided to move some of my potted vegetables indoors. fortunately, i had great help from my gardening assistant, who even assisted with a vehicle:

on a positive note, the number of carrots has increased dramatically since last year. this is because last year, i only grew one carrot. but we have nibbled at the small tasty carrots, and still there are more 'rots left in the earth, which means there will be no lean spring for us. hmm... perhaps i should do it like this every year?

crochety

2009-10-13T05:07:00.000-07:00

ta-da! a thing!
for some reason, i haven't been able to wrap my mind around the concept of crochet. i have been shown and guided into doing it several times, but it always seems to end up twisted, and then slip out before i actually make something. therefore, the fact that i managed to crochet something at all is a major accomplishment. let planning, pattern and evenness come later.

the inspiration for this thing was a broken dragon – not headless, but definitely lacerated, courtesy of my dog in one of his wilder moods. the 'body' has already been patched up with old green raingear; now was the time to mend the net.

i used an array of teaching videos and websites to show me exactly how to place the thread and needle, including the interestingly named learntoknit.com, which nevertheless has a superb crochety layout. and it worked! i produced my first crocheted thing, attached it to the dragon, and let it reclaim its original purpose – guarding a hoard of scarves, mittens and hats.

itsy bitsy steps

2009-08-02T07:48:00.000-07:00

today, we've been excavating. the bottom of our garden is also a built-up bank of the river, so whenever we do something there we find something that's been used to "build" it.

the biggest thing we've found was what i guess used to be the bottom of a shower -- we also dug out the shower head, and its pipe. we used it to make a stylish step outside the kitchen door. then, there's about a tonne of bricks, and some fascinating pot shards. not greek or roman, but wedgwood, perhaps?

what will not be touched are the broken concrete tiles at the bottom of the embankment. we're worried that they may be what's holding everything up, and we don't want our garden furniture to end up at the bottom of the river for future excavators.

sewing machine cover

2009-06-29T15:01:00.000-07:00

after seeing too much fabulous patchwork, i'd given myself beginner's nerves about patchwork. there's too much exactness involved, an area where i don't really excel. the first and last quilt i made, in seventh grade, consisted of one block of
log cabin, and even there i managed to create a hole through meanness on margins.

besides, i hate the idea of cutting up big bits of perfectly usable fabric into smaller bits. and the table was too cluttered. and so i procrastinated on.

but no more! through intense self-therapy, i realised that fabric lying folded up in boxes is even more useless than cut-up bits. especially the old curtains, skirts and bedclothes that were only useful for quilting anyway.

there was also the matter of the sewing machine, which despite its case keeps attracting dirt, dust, and dog hair, and could possibly end up as a black dusthole without intervention. besides, a machine can't complain if there are unevennesses in the patchwork.

the cover was made using the "practical" method, which involved trying it on a lot. here, once again, the machine and its case were models of patience. the cover ended up fitting as snugly as if it had been sewn on. which left no room for lining. which was just as well, since i hadn't been as careful with the lining part, and it ended up too small.

but never mind. the most important thing is this: the dust must now find other places to gather. it seems to have picked underneath the table. could the next project be a rug?

miracle of spring

2009-03-11T16:25:00.000-07:00

furute marigolds:

yes! my window sills are full of all manners of seedlings now. it's a wonder, first that seeds can turn into these baby plants if you just add earth and water, second that i remembered to 1. buy seeds, 2. get pots, 3. add earth and 4. plant the seeds in a timely fashion, that is, not in the last weeks of summer.

tiffany taught me about making newspaper pots, which meant i was not delayed by not having suitable planters. then i was nudged a little by a little one to buy seeds for flowers, and also got some veg and grass seeds. earth there is aplenty in the garden, what with all the digging i'm doing, so with all the materials needed, the miracle could happen...

on the last day of christmas

2009-01-06T13:35:00.000-08:00

today is epiphany, as noted by others, and to those of us who don't chuck out the christmas tree on boxing day, this is the last day of christmas.

i don't have a lot of christmas gear, but i do have nice boxen to cart it away in. made last may from the wrapping paper of the previous christmas, and some cartons we used to move with. but you can't talk about christmas in may, can you? only in december, and the beginning of january, until the last day of christmas, which, as mentioned earlier, is today. so, behold my boxen!

recycling for 2009

2009-01-02T07:21:00.000-08:00

both twiggy and i have a compulsion to collect candle stubs, so over the long christmas meals i fiddled a bit with them and turned them into a new candle. it looked most artistic, and seemed a suitable thing to burn on new year's eve.

we were a little apprehensive about how the series of wicks would work. at one crossing, the candle went out. thereafter, it continued burning merrily, gathering wicks as it went. when it had four of them, the flame was so high i decided it was time to end the experiment.
while we didn't have fireworks for new year, we certainly had excitement!

merrily!

2008-12-26T06:05:00.000-08:00

it seems that my crop is enjoying the spirit of the season as well. i moved the pepper indoors in november, and on christmas eve i noticed that half of the fruit had turned red.

how the little evergreen erupted in cheerful tartan bows, i can't explain, however.

my crop

2008-11-24T14:44:00.001-08:00

hiding beneath the foliage:

one green chili, and one stunted carrot.

success! i grew food!

making a garden

2008-11-22T13:22:00.000-08:00

when we moved into our new house, with its wonky doors and el cheapo flooring, we got the best type of garden you can inherit: not a wilderness of thorns and sorrows, but neither was it a piece of perfected natural beauty. with a mediocer lawn and ageing gravel, it was a clean, green-and-brown slate for us to experiment on.

we spent the summer months removing the gravel, unearthing an area of hard-packed earth. this is the sunniest spot on the plot, where i plan to have my kitchen garden. there was no time for heavy spadework, as the summer holidays were about to intervene with hectic travelling and general laziness. however, i did want to harvest something, so i planted some carrots. a colleague gave twiggy, popularly known as fire-tongue, a selection of hot pepper plants. i also sowed some kvick-and-easy salad.

unfortunately, the hard and clayish soil wasn't very good for the carrots, and neither were the slugs, which ate half of the seedlings, and devoured all the salad. they did stay away from the chili, however, which thrived.

our solution to make the garden greener, instantly, was to place all the indoor potted plants outside. this ensured a problem-free vacation for them. they also made us realise how happy our garden could look, if given some tending, love, and shovelling.

this is our bike shed

2008-10-21T04:16:00.000-07:00

after juggling designs around for a bit, and rejecting any and all ready-made sheds for bikes as much too big for our forecourt, we scaled down to an uncovered post structure to lean our bikes on.

we worked together on this one -- i used the POWER SAW to cut up a nice bit of wood the former owners of the house had left behind (and which seemed to deserve a better fate than just propping up flower beds in the garden), twiggy assembled it with nuts and bolts (possibly also acorns and twigs).

the structure was then anchored in the ground and let go as we held our breaths. it didn't fall, and hasn't yet, after the first rainfall. victory!

after we'd moved the bikes from the crowded hallway and put them where they belong, we noticed that the child seat looks like a smily face. surely no coincidence?

my first quilt!

2008-10-12T16:28:00.000-07:00

and, equally wonderful, i actually finished something!

this is a small quilt made out of an old, inherited (when buying a house) curtain, an old chair covering (which we got used) and a nice, flowing skirt which had the misfortune of being torn by a washing machine. i really like all of these fabrics, so i couldn't stand the idea of cutting them up into small pieces for patchwork. so large bits and applique it was.

this ensured that the first step, of making a nice front, could be done quickly, and i could try my hand at the thing which is actually quilting: transforming fabric by sewing a great many lines through several layers of material. i went in for wavy lines similar to the plant tendrils of the chair covering. forestalling the inevitable scrunching up of fabrics near the end in places, because i knew i hadn't been very exact in assembly, i had folded the thin skirt material in a very artistic way. i think it worked, in that the unplanned scrunching is quite well camouflaged.

then, to fit it around a round board, i used the lower end of an old top and got a nearly perfect, usefully elastic fit.

(the filling was an old baby blanket and the back an old shirt. i'm not trying to make a virtue out of reusing stuff here, even though it is a virtue -- just saying why i think i'll call this one "the old quilt".)

i am pleased and we have a new message board. picture suitably shrunk to please privacy worriers.

picking up the thread

2008-10-03T08:11:00.000-07:00

it's like this.

i read books about three at a time, leaving them in various places and picking them up for a few pages, mixing and matching narrative threads rather haphazardly. i read someone lamenting this google-eyed loss of concentration as a net-based thing, but i've been doing it for years, long before google was a verb, even before altavista offered its exciting views.

the same attitude applies to most of the stuff i do, leaving an awful lot of threads (not balls, luckily) hanging in the air at any given moment. even worse, when i do complete a project, if i want to show it somewhere -- like at this blog -- i feel there should be some order to it. which is quite hard to achieve, given the tangled timelines and, once again, my tendency to distraction.

these threads belong to a jacket i began knitting last year, for my mother-in-law who had just moved to colder climes in india. yes, they do exist, and are absolutely freezing. i brought the knitting there and got something done, but was far from completion at the end of our stay. i then only picked it up before our next trip to india this year. that was when i took a good look at it, said "what rubbish!", and unravelled two thirds of what i had done.

it will therefore be a while before i can present a completed knitted jacket on my blog. but, if both the blogger and the reader can reconcile themelves to a little jumping and time-space tweaking, there may be other stuff up -- faster than you can knit a cow.

making sense? i don't think so.

2008-07-27T03:18:00.000-07:00

for my orientalist course, i have to analyse a text by Edward Said.

What Said said, he said. He is therefore an idition. And he’s also staid. Nuff said!

i think i have a pretty good beginning wright here. if i can only expand on it a bit, and manage to define "iditon" in a nicely postcolonial way...

time to make a zoo!

2008-07-14T15:06:00.000-07:00

the only reason our little animal-loving family doesn't have pets yet is that the three of us have been locked in eternal debate over whose favourite to get: cat, dog, or rabbit. mine, the long-eared one, seems to have drawn the long straw (literally -- we'd prefer a vegetarian pet), but now we've been simultaneously distracted by a completely different creature...

chooks!

perhaps we should simply get a house & run that fits friends both feathered and furry, and wait and see what we end up with?

when bees are not the bee's knees

2008-07-09T07:29:00.001-07:00

this is what it looks like when bees swarm in and occupy a parking space on the street.

they were doing something slightly simlar to our garden staircase a while ago...

bees can be quite scary when they do that -- even a hardened dragon like myself, who pooh-poos the family's hysterical reactions to the insects, trod warily on said staircase as the bees were installing their buzzers.

after twiggy's web research showed that the best organic gardening advice on colonising bees was "leave them bee" (heh), we decided to skirt the problem. i got out hammer and nail, and carpentered a beautiful step over the new hive.

afterwards, we pretended we'd planned to do that all along.

we got us a pile

2008-05-22T23:21:00.000-07:00

among the supplements to the sunday papers (wondrous things), we sometimes find a "house" or "home" magazine which talks about buying and interior designing, and never describes houses costing less then a million ~~dollars!~~ pounds. in these periodicals, i have many a time seen a manorial house described as a "Victorian pile" or a "Georgian pile". this was new to me, as i think of "pile" as various heaped things.

approaching the OED to attain wisdom, i got more than i bargained for. apparently, pile can mean, among other things:

A grain, awn, or husk of barley, corn, etc. Also fig. (Sc. and Eng. regional.)
A stake or post fixed in the ground, used as a target when practising sword-strokes. Obs. rare.
A pointed stake or post; spec. one of a number of heavy wooden or metal posts or beams, pointed or sharpened at the lower end and driven vertically into a river-bed, the sea, or marshy ground to support the foundations of a superstructure such as a house, a bridge, a pier, etc.
The reverse side of a coin. Freq. in cross and (or) pile: ‘heads and (or) tails’,
A stronghold, a castle, esp. a small castle or tower; = PEEL n.2 3. Also fig. Now arch. and rare.
A set of weights fitting one upon another so as to form a solid cone, pyramid, or other figure, prob. used esp. for gold and silver; such a set of weights conforming to a standard. Also: the balance or weighing device making use of these weights.
A heap of wood or similar material on which a corpse, sacrifice, etc., is burnt; a pyre.
Any large group or collection of things (without reference to height). Now colloq.: (in sing. and pl.) a large quantity, amount, or number.
A large amount money; a fortune. (orig. U.S.)
More fully pile claim. A rich mining claim. Now hist. and rare. (Austral. and N.Z.)
A large building or edifice, esp. a stately home.
A nuclear reactor, esp. one of the original (or similar) design, having as the moderator a pile of graphite blocks in which the fuel was embedded. Now hist.
A pillar, a pier, esp. each of the piers of a bridge.
Hair, esp. fine soft hair or down; spec. the fine short underfur of certain mammals, now esp. the Old English sheepdog; the wool of sheep
Red or yellowish plumage markings on white or pale-coloured fowls.
The raised surface or nap on a fabric (such as velvet, plush, etc., or esp. a carpet) formed by weaving a secondary warp in loops which are either cut or left intact; the nap on cloth.

it appears that we did buy a pile -- and while i really like definition number 5, and we do have the necessary moat and ferocious guard ducks, i'd have to say that what we really got with our purchase was number 8, in the shape of a large heap of rubble, rubbing the eyes sore at the bottom of the garden. somebody seemed to have thought that they could extend it indefinitely by piling rubble down the river bank. so far, we have unearthed enough bricks, concrete slabs and bits of broken shower to create three steps of stairs and a garden path. i'll let you know if a sacrifice shows up as well.

duty fulfilled

2008-04-26T15:43:00.001-07:00

the Austen essay was marked and praised, which makes me very happy because
1) it's the first literary essay i've done on this level, and i feel lost amidst all the jargon of my fellow student, and
2) i did a lot of work, and i like praise.
as a reward... or something... i found out which Austen heroine i am, in one of the worst quizzes ever designed. did you know, Austen only put "quiz" in the mouth of her more frivolous and unpleasant characters? perhaps i shouldn't have done it after all...

undutifulness

2008-04-22T16:12:00.001-07:00

i made up a new word today. then i googled undutifulness, and learned that it exists. yay. it enabled me to chop a few words off the word count, which is one of the most important things in essays, apparently. that, and creating neat and proper footnoes (like the tyope?) and bibliographies. after i had whittled and polished, with the help of my excellent spouse, i had exactly ten minutes left before the deadline to hand in the essay. perfect timing, as always.

now i can spend my days in carefree idleness for a while. all the tasks that are left are laying a floor, packing up and cleaning a house, moving into another...

2008-04-19T09:34:00.000-07:00

i'm writing a masterpiece (yeah, wright) on Mansfield Park read from a postcolonial point of view. researching Jane Austen is fun, except for the inevitable hash-ups of the opening line from "Pride & Prejudice" that will keep appearing again and again. it's unbelievable how bad this elegant sentence can become in the hands of copywriting philistines:

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a visitor to Hampshire must be in search of an appreciation of Jane Austen." (janetour)

...err, is it, now?

luckily, there are places where it is put to rather more witty use:

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single girl in possession of a large book collection must be in want of a life." (katherine's diary)

speaking of which, there is this large pile of books which i fear i will have to read now...

getting rid of the evidence

2008-04-04T16:01:00.000-07:00

this blog is dedicated to stuff i make, but not necessarily wonderful stuff, or that of an incredibly creative kind. now, i appear to have made a stink.

there are many places one can place household rubbish: in the normal rubbish bin, in a compost heap, or if one is lucky, in a compost bin. i am averse to waste, so in our gnu house i tried out the heap solution, until it became too much of a heap. while we didn't have a proper bin, there was a battered old water butt -- when we arrived, i had emptied it of filthy water and cigarette butts (heh) -- and placed it upside down, to keep it out of trouble.

if only i had let this wise solution be my last. but no, i decided to stuff it with the goodies, since it was almost like a compost bin, right?

fast forward, and it's time to move on, leaving this house that is not ours, and disposing of the evidence in the garden. i removed the flower pot that has been serving as a makeshift and noticed with some concern that it was pretty full of water. a few moment later, i noticed that the water had the quality of stench.

i carefully drain it, making sure it doesn't spill on me or is let loose upon the concrete, and place the water bin, still full of compost material, upside down on top of it. it's a bit like having caught a wasp in a glass. what on earth do you do next?

still spring, still birds...

2008-03-27T08:29:00.000-07:00

...and still something eastery. i was in spam quarantine for a day, you see, probably because of an unfortunate choice of words re:poultry. this provides the perfect reason for not having finished with the easter stuff yet (that, and twiggy says we can keep the ornaments up until orthodox easter) when the true reason is procrastination. be that as it may, the thing itself -- an egg-shaped easter basket -- was made on time and provided a perfect nest for our easter paraphernalia, such as paper butterflies, a bunny, and a choklit egg.

it was also put to good use by the little one on an egg hunt, at least for the few seconds that were needed to take a photo. afterwards she happily tossed the basket away and scampered off to look at leaves and twigs, mostly ignoring the easter eggs.

happy easter!

2008-03-23T15:47:00.001-07:00

in appreciation of the easter dromedary i decided to make a completely ordinary easter cock and hen. of course, while the cock turned out fine and dandy, the hen in the end became a bit of a cross between just such a king of the desert and the great a'tuin, but you can't get it right every time.

interestingly, the cock was made quickly and sleep-deprivedly late at night, while more measured thought and planning went into the hen...