Tales from PipneyJane's Kitchen

The Use It Up Challenge

2012-02-10T18:40:00.000Z

You may have noticed that one of my goals this year is to work my way through the small stockpile of "stuff" I have accumulated: a random collection of make-up, hotel shampoo bottles, cosmetic samples, herbs and spices, jars of jams and sauces, even clothes that don't get worn because they have committed the crime of needing to be ironed. It is an eclectic list. The only defining factor is that the item involved is something that is currently gathering dust but it is something that I use and therefore don't want to throw out, because if I did throw it out I will have to purchase a substitute. Does that make sense?

Another part of the challenge is that I don't want to waste something just so I can tell myself it is "finished". By that, I mean lipstick has to be used right to the bottom of the tube and not just to the point where you can't paint it on your lips without using a lip-brush. Ditto lip gloss and make-up base that comes in a stick. I still need to get my money's worth.

Here are the make-up stockpiles and what I propose to do with them:-

Make-up base.

I have ten in my stockpile, including two tubs of PanCake (bought because it doesn't melt off your face in humid weather), four Avon all-in-one bases for travel (bought in bulk to take advantage of an offer) and the last of my famous Boots score from 2004 (when I bought 6 bottles of base at 50p each, thinking they would last maybe 3 months each - instead they lasted 10).

What I've started with, though, are the dregs of a tube of PanStick. Like lipstick, probably the bottom third of any stick make-up is inaccessible, so I gouged it out of the tube and dumped it into a recently emptied Avon make-up compact. I now apply it in exactly the same manner, using the sponge that came from Avon.

Lipstick.

Most women probably have a stash of assorted lipsticks, at least one for every occasion. I know for a certainty that I have only bought one lipstick in the last 4 years and yet a quick count tells me that I have 34! However, that includes my stock of 9 Covergirl lipsticks in the Bistro Burgundy shade, the brand (and colour) that I wear almost daily but which is unavailable in this country. I buy them whenever I go to Australia or North America. I have two on the go at any given time: one on my dresser and one in my bag for top-ups. When the one on the dresser is completely used up, I rotate the handbag one to the dresser and pop a new lipstick in my handbag.

Although I wear lipstick every day to work, each one lasts for close to two years, partially because I use a lip brush to apply the bottom third, and partially because I've solved the problem of keeping lipstick "on" all day, so that you don't have to constantly reapply it. (There is nothing worse than having your lipstick come off on your mug or glass.) The secret: apply lipstick to dry lips, blot on a tissue and then apply a coat of Lipcoat. It will then last the whole day, unless lunch is really greasy, although the colour may fade a bit as the day goes on. If your Lipcoat peels, then you didn't blot it well enough. You have to apply it to dry lipstick.

Blusher.

I'm still using a blusher that I purchased in...... wait for it...... 1986. That's right 26 years ago. If that's not an advert for the longevity of Clinque's products, I don't know what is. Admittedly, for the first 6 years, I worked in a job where you did not wear make-up (I never wore make-up to work when I nursed - it'd come off on the masks). And twice it went into time-out when I used up other blushers, but neither of those lasted longer than a year. I have been expecting it to run out for a long time and purchased a replacement some time ago. However, a quick count reveals I have six other blushers stockpiled, which includes the replacement, a "travel" blusher, the emergency blusher from this post, and two Estee Lauder free-bees from a "gift" (one of those buy "2 items and get a free gift" things, in this case the set of bags that are my knitting bags. I was surprised to discover they held make-up).

The big secret to making your blusher last a long time is to use a proper blusher brush. I think it is because the brush covers a larger area of you face per application than the one that comes in the compact.

Mascara.

Apparently, I have seven, including three sample-sized ones and the one I'm using now. This is another product I use to the very end. I am aware that "experts" say to only use a mascara for three months because of potential contamination but I have never had an eye infection from this product. If I feel any irritation after applying a mascara, it goes straight in the bin. (I can't wear Rimmel mascara. It has something in it that irritates my eyes.) I do not share my mascara or my lipstick so consider that any bugs that might be growing in them have cousins still on me.

OK, that's my "dirty laundry". What's yours?

- Pam

Palindrome

2012-02-05T08:00:00.000Z

And now back to your usual programming....

The Toy has an announcement to make:

2012-02-04T17:53:00.002Z

To all those muscle cars, driven by hotheads who think they own the road, next time you're pretending speed limits don't apply to you and insisting the rest of us move out of your way, here's something you'll never be able to do:

Here, take a closer look:

Yeah. See what I mean?

Next time you come roaring up the motorway, weaving in and out of cars like you're a pin-ball, remember this is what a REAL MUSCLE CAR is all about. And that car, is me!!!

Milestone 250,000 miles 22 January 2012

Cheap is not the only reason to buy

2012-01-26T12:07:00.001Z

You will be relieved to know that my recent bout of yarn-lust didn't result in a purchase. Maybe, as Amy suggested, it was the time between receiving Lidl's email and actually visiting a branch (Lidl is a supermarket chain from Germany), that allowed it to wear off. Maybe it was because I'd spent several hours rummaging through the stash on Sunday, reacquainting myself with what I already have. Maybe it was because none of the patterns are screaming "Make me in this!", but when I popped into Lidl yesterday, I was underwhelmed by the look of the yarn and the colours on offer.

It was all quite "Meh" in the flesh. Ok, but nothing special. Even the sock yarn didn't appeal. Forget the bargain price. Cheap is no good unless you want to knit with it. And I don't.

This is one big reason I prefer to buy my yarn in person rather than via the internet - internet purchases often look far prettier on the monitor than in real life and colours are deceptive. (I do purchase yarn online, but it is usually something I've seen and touched first.)

Lesson reinforced.

Pam

Non-darning sock repair

2012-01-24T19:59:00.005Z

Over Christmas, one of the things I did was repair the worn-out soles of a pair of DH's socks. These were alpaca socks that I knitted for him in 2009 and, I've just realised, I've never documented. (The closest I've got was in this post, when I ended up knitting on them in a traffic jam.) The yarn is UK Alpaca's Alpaca Sock Yarn, a 60% alpaca, 20% merino wool, 20% nylon yarn.

Anyway, last winter, DH wore the ball of one foot down to the nylon.

I don't darn socks, but after the labour-of-love it took to make them, I decided I had to do something. So I hit upon the idea of knitting a patch over the top. (The rest of the socks are in good condition.) Using a latch hook, I picked up stitches along one side of the worn section and slipped them over a DPN.

Then I knitted a row and purled back. On the next and subsequent knit rows, I picked up the stitch that was parallel to the patch and knitted it together with the end stitch from the patch. (Not sure how clearly you can see that from this photo.)

Basically, I knitted a pocket that was attached across the bottom and down both sides.

When I was satisfied that the patch covered the worn area, I Kitchener stitched the patch to the sole.

Finally, I wove in the ends, using them to invisibly tack the nylon to the patch.

And voila! Not invisible - the yarn is from a different dye lot for a start - but it's soft, doesn't rub and will last for a long time.

- Pam

Frugal Friday - Temptations and Balancing Acts

2012-01-20T18:32:00.002Z

I am having one of those days, when I want something "just because" and part of me is rationalising hard to get it. The thing is, it might turn out to be pretty ordinary when I finally get my hands on it. But I won't know that until I handle it. All I've seen are pictures and the colours are lovely...

Naturally, I'm talking about yarn. I subscribe to the Lidl newsletter, which lands in my in-box on Mondays and Thursdays. Every so often, they do knitting yarns and the odds are 70:30 in favour of their yarns being good instead of cheap, nasty acrylics. Yesterday's edition announced that, as of Monday, they'll be stocking a cotton-wool-blend sock yarn (this one with a new name), some 100% DK cotton in assorted packs (meh), and a cotton-viscose blend DK which really caught my attention (this one, I think). The colours I'm lusting after are the two at the back, the pretty pink and the aqua:

(Photo from Lidl's website.)

They'll be sold in packs of 4 skeins for £4.99 a pack. Two packs of either would be enough to make a Soleil from Knitty; three would make a Raina from the Twist Collective. And here is where my argument with myself really starts:

On the one hand, the price is totally within my self-imposed £3/ball limit.

On the other hand, purchasing enough to make the Raina would absorb a quarter of my £60 yarn budget for the year and we're only one month in; buying both colours would have me spend £25 or even £30 on something I might not knit with for 2 or 3 years. That's 40% or 50% of the budget. Can I really go 11 more months on £30? Money will be tight until DH gets a new job and I don't want to set myself up so that I'll break the budget later on. Also, if I spend this much now, what will I do if something better comes along later?

On the first hand, I'd like to encourage Lidl to keep stocking yarn, and the only way to do that is to buy some.

On the second hand, I have two separate yarns in virtually the same shade as the pink (if the photo is true to life). I don't need more.

On the first hand, I don't have anything like that aqua. I could settle for just the one colour. And while Soleil is nice, the Raina will be more flattering (especially if I modify the neck to a sweetheart one like this one in Ravelry). Or I could do the Soleil - that'd mean only spending £10.

On the other hand, I have far too much yarn as it is. I DON'T NEED MORE YARN.

God, I hope the stuff looks horrible in real life! That'd save me from trying to square the circle. Knowing I only have £xx to spend means that I want to get the best value possible and not squander it. I have to balance the "I want it now" with the "but will I want that more, later?". That is what budgeting is all about. It's a way of ensuring that sufficient money accumulated now for goodies later.

- Pam

A letter to Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo:

2012-01-19T15:58:00.000Z

Recently, I've been catching up on your podcasts, having missed several weeks of live shows. One thing I've noticed is Mark's regular disparaging remarks about so called "comedies" such as The Hangover. A few weeks ago, while I watched Burn After Reading (3 laughs); a question occurred to me upon which I'd like to hear your views: is modern American comedy predicated on the assumption that the audience is stupid and that, as a consequence, the audience finds stupidity funny?

I'll rant about Burn After Reading because it is the most recent example I have watched, but you could substitute any one of a hundred other films. It was impossible to connect with the characters played by Brad Pitt, George Clooney or Frances McDormand - they had no character traits other than stupidity and self-centredness. They just weren't interesting. Surely comedy works best when you have sympathy for a character? The only main character in that film who wasn't vapid, stupid and self-centred was John Malkovich's, Ossie Cox. Ditto, he was the only really interesting person. And yet, in a film which starts off about the disintegration of his life, he rapidly becomes a bit-part character because the producers/director/writers found it easier to focus on the stupid characters.

Anyway, what do you think? Is it possible for modern Hollywood to produce a comedy about well rounded characters which relies on intelligence and wit to be funny?

Love the show, Steve. Say "Hi" to Jason Isaacs for me.

- Pam

Broccoli & Stilton Soup

2012-01-10T07:00:00.000Z

Whenever we have broccoli, I save the stems in the freezer until I have the urge to make Broccoli and Stilton Soup. I use the stems as padding, instead of using two heads of broccoli, I'll use one head including the stem plus another stem. However, if you're feeling particularly frugal use 3 or 4 stems and no florets of broccoli. If you've only got frozen broccoli, you'll need about 500g/1lb.

If you don't have Stilton, you can use any other blue cheese. Be warned if you use Danish Blue - it gets most of its flavour from salt.

Since I decided to make soup, DH dug the bread maker out of storage. Here's proof you can make bread and cook a meal with vitually no workspace whatsover.

Broccoli & Stilton Soup - Serves 4

Ingredients

1 tablespoon of oil or butter
1 medium onion, sliced
1 clove garlic, crushed
200ml dry white wine or cider
800ml stock (or water plus 2 stock cubes)
1 head broccoli plus 1 or 2 stems
150g Stilton or other strong blue cheese, cubed
Pepper to season

Method

In a deep saucepan, melt the butter or heat the oil. Stir in the onion and garlic and fry until soft.
Meanwhile, cut the broccoli into florets and slice the stems.
When the onion is soft, pour over the wine or cider together with stock, then gently add the broccoli. Bring to the boil and simmer for 20 minutes or until the stems are soft.
Stir in the cheese and keep stirring while it melts.
Using a hand blender, blend until smooth. Alternatively, if you have a food processor or stand-alone blender, carefully ladle the hot soup into the blender and process until smooth, then return to cooking pot or decant into a soup terrine. Do not over process - I once made a soup so smooth and textureless that it was horrible to eat. It had the mouth-feel of water.
Season with freshly ground pepper. You won't need salt because the cheese is salty enough.
Serve with fresh bread.

Enjoy!

- Pam

Frugal Friday - the "M" word

2012-01-06T17:35:00.001Z

M is for money.

It seems that, every where I looked before Christmas, people were talking about budgets and budgeting. The BBC ran a series of the Money Programme looking at people and money. Channel 4 ran a Christmas Special episode of Superscrimpers as well as The Ultimate Guide to Pennypinching. We recorded most of the episodes and have caught up over the last week.

The BBC Money Programme series started with an episode about people paying hundreds/thousands of pounds to attend wealth seminars, in the blind hope that they'll discover some big "secret" that'll make them rich overnight without putting in some hard graft first. The people profiled missed the big irony - that the real secret behind wealth seminars is in the income they generate for the organisers a.k.a. "wealth counsellors" and not in the information they're presenting to their audience. (That is a rant for another day.)

What was more interesting to me were the second and third episodes: the second episode was about couples and the conflicts money (or lack of it) causes; the third profiled several families where their combined, after-tax income was £40,000. In each, the couples talked about their budgets and their attitudes to money. The couples episode, in particular, included questions about whether they ever talked about money to each other, how they rated the other person's attitude to money, etc.

Some really stuck in the memory. For example, I don't rate the longevity of the marriage of the legal secretary who despised her NHS-employed, research scientist husband's income for being too low at approximately £31k. He has a PhD and is working on potentially life-saving research but science doesn't pay in this country (frankly, if he was married to me, I'd be really proud of him for the work that he does and not care about his salary). Her opinion, though, was that he is failing as a husband because he would not keep her and her children in the manner to which she'd liked to be accustomed. According to her, he was "tight" with money. It was obvious that she compared him to the lawyers for whom she worked, who earn a lot more than he does and who probably have stay at home wives, kids at private school, etc. They only married because she got pregnant within 6 weeks of their first date and didn't have a "money conversation" until long afterwards.

(Incidentally, the obvious money-earner has never seemed to occur to her: studying law and persuading her employers to back her. Or as DH put it, "Stop moaning about your husband's income and work out a way to earn some more yourself".)

One of the eye-opening points of the show, of all these shows really, is that many couples never talk about money. Oh, they grumble about each other's spending and how much things cost, but they never really talk about money. Or about what they want it to do for them. That is what a real money conversation should be all about: goals. It's about determining what you want out of life and how you will get there. It's also about working out how you will pay for it. For a couple, it's about give-and-take, determining what is jointly a priority and what they'll sacrifice to get there. It shouldn't be about one person giving all, while another take-take-takes. Both partners need to pull their weight.

Really, that is what budgeting should be all about. Sitting down with your partner and determining what you want out of life, what it's going to cost, how long it will take to get there and how much you'll need to set aside from each pay-cheque in order to pay for it in the long run. Then when the priorities are settled, you need to work out together how you're going to have a good quality of life from the money that remains. The aim is to have a champagne life-style on a beer budget without going into debt to support it, while setting money aside to work towards your goals.

- Pam

I'm with lurgy

2012-01-05T08:37:00.001Z

I don't think I've had more than a minor cold since 2008 but, this year, one has really hit me. This one started with the sneezes last Thursday and appears to be progressing one symptom at a time. (I really hate it when that happens.) Naturally, it started when I was already on leave - I'm sure there are statistics about that somewhere, people getting sick when they finally have time to relax. However, I know that since it's a cold, I would have become infected in the first or second week of December. That's when the lurgy was going around the office.

I phoned in sick on Tuesday, with my tonsils pretending to be golf-balls. By yesterday night, they were down so I thought "Yes, I can cope with work. I'll go into work tomorrow". Set the alarm for 6am this morning. It went off, I got up had my shower, etc, sat down with my breakfast coffee and realised that I felt more tired than I did when I went to bed last night. Breathing was harder, too. So I phoned the office and told my team that I won't be in for the rest of the week.

I do hope this damn thing isn't escalating.

- Pam

PS: Yes, I've had my flu jab. I've been having flu jabs ~~religiously~~ annually since I developed a secondary chest infection after having the flu in 2000. My GP recommended it, which means I get it for free on the NHS. I'd have paid for it, prior to that, but it was almost impossible to find somewhere to obtain it. (One year, my employer organised flu jabs for everyone who wanted one. We paid £5 each towards them.) Now, of course, you can buy a flu jab in Boots.

A time of reflection

2011-12-30T17:23:00.002Z

Did you have a merry Christmas? Or was it just so-so? Mine was excellent, thank you, although it felt strange working right up to Christmas Eve. For the last four years, I've managed to take the last few days of before Christmas, but not this year. Still, I have had the time off between Christmas and New Year - a much needed break.

For me, the time between Christmas and New Year is always a time for reflection and goal setting. What did I achieve last year? What do I want to achieve in 2012? Etc, etc. It's that whole "New Year, new me" thing.

In 2011, I set 8 goals:-

No stash enhancement (I've gone cold sheep)
To conquer the garden
To do the Lincoln 10k
To finish the year with no UFOs
To get pregnant (yes, this cancels out other goals)
To knit 1 pair of socks every 2 months
To knit 6 sweaters
To lose 25lb in weight

So how did I do? On the whole, not badly. To summarise: cold sheeping failed spectacularly. We did manage to remove the ~~non-hedge~~ trees from the back garden so it no longer needs to be napalmed, but it is still far too wild and unruly. I walked the Lincoln 10k dressed as a French Maid and we raised about £1,000 for charity in the end. 2011 is going to finish with the same two UFO's it began with (a shrug from Verena that just needs to be sewn together and my Hibiscus for Hope socks, which had to be suspended while I knitted the Sunray Ribbing top from A Stitch in Time because I wasn't sure whether I'd need to frog them for the yarn). No, I didn't get pregnant. And I lost 15lb in weight. I actually managed to knit six sweaters in 2011, as well as the second half of a seventh, so that goal was well and truly met (I'll put up photos eventually). As was the one to knit a pair of socks every two months - I completed 6 pairs, almost finished a seventh and re-knitted one of the Hibiscus for Hope socks.

For 2012, I have a whole new batch of ~~New Year's Resolutions~~ goals:-

To really work at having a decent veggie garden this year. I'd like to be able to feed us from it for days/weeks at a time.
To use things up. I have a stockpile of "stuff": make-up, fabric, cross stitch stuff, yarn, even cooking ingredients. As Gigi Knitmoreonce said, "There's no point in saving things just in case the Queen drops in. Use it and enjoy it".
To only buy yarn from a) charity shops or b) if it is less than £3/ball. Oh, and the yarn budget for 2012 will be £60 for the year, no more. I've tried going "cold sheep" and not buying yarn and all that happens is that I'll be good for months and then go mad.
To be tidy. I have the messy gene - I can put a pen on an empty table and it'll look like a bomb hit it in 2 minutes flat. I can't do neat but I can do tidy.
To be more organised. No more forgetting things or procrastinating and putting off things that need to be done.
To buy less than 12 items of clothing in 2012 (underwear, socks and stockings exempted). Ideally, I'd like to buy them from charity shops - I've had really good luck recently and scored 3 brand new suits for less than £10 each. (I have far too many clothes anyway, so need to wear some stuff until it wears out.)
To lose at least another stone (14lb) in weight. I want to lose the spare tyre that has settled on my midriff.
The nebulous fitness goal: to strengthen my body by working out/lifting weights three times a week.
The not-so-nebulous fitness goal: to be able to run 5k/3 miles without stopping, and to achieve this before my birthday in August.
To knit another 6 pairs of socks and 6 sweaters in 2012. And to make them from stash yarns.
To blog more. I didn't post nearly enough this year.

What about you? How did your 2011 New Year's Resolutions do? Did any last beyond January? Are you planning on doing any for 2012?

I'd like to wish you all a very happy New Year. May your resolutions be achieved and all your dreams and wishes in 2012 come true. Here's hoping 2012 will be a kinder year for all of us.

- Pam

Other things to think about

2011-12-16T10:52:00.004Z

I have other things to worry about besides the impending Great Depression...

The kitchen roof failed on Tuesday. I heard a slow drip when I wandered down to make breakfast. Dashed into the kitchen and found a small puddle forming on top of the recycling. Shoved the "laundry basket" under that (a large trug). It collected maybe a pint of water before the rain stopped. Phoned the builder - he can't get to us until the week between Christmas and New Year. Hopefully he can patch it up enough to take us through to the summer, when he is scheduled to replace it with a pitched, tiled roof. (I hate flat roofs.) It's rained since then but no more drips.

Worry number 2 is that DH'a job finished abruptly yesterday. In a way, I am not surprised. They'd already informed him that they were halving his hours and splitting his job into 2 in a misguided bid to save money (it won't). I think they picked an excuse and ran with it because the other guy was cheaper. They've shot themselves in the foot though because the other guy can only work part time and won't work Saturdays.

As they say, bad things come in threes... Eldest Sis phoned me yesterday - Dad's baby brother died at 2am. He'd just faded away since Uncle Ron died. So now there is nobody left of that generation.

This has turned into a depressing post! I'm not normally like that. I'm one of life's optimists - keep trying and something good will happen is my philosophy. Ok, so what good things have happened? Well my boss told me I will get a raise in January's pay reviews. No idea what yet - I didn't put him on the spot and ask how much (anyway until it is approved by corporate, he won't know for sure how much anyone will get but it will be something). How's that?

- Pam

Life's unanswerable question #24: the Euro crisis

2011-12-12T17:34:00.000Z

Over the past few months, I have been bemused, puzzled and worried by the situation in Europe - the near default and bailout of Ireland, Greece, Portugal and Spain. Italy is the latest rabbit in the headlights and France is being lined up to follow (French banks have had their credit status downgraded).

These are all countries that have been throttled by the straight-jacket that is their membership of the Euro. They cannot devalue their currency in order to give themselves a competitive advantage over their neighbours. They also cannot print currency to inflate their way out of the current crisis, as Britain and America have attempted to do ("fiscal stimulus" by another name).

Since joining the Euro, Ireland, Spain and Portugal have experienced property booms, funded by interest rates that were far lower than they would have been if they'd kept their original currencies. Money was cheap, borrowing it became easier and easier as banks funded themselves on the wholesale market. Prudence was forgotten. Then along came 2008 and the collapse of Lehman Brothers. The supply of easy money dried up overnight and many banks turned to their national governments for bailouts, effectively nationalising themselves. That's what did for Ireland, Spain and Portugal. Spain, in particular, wasn't a highly indebted nation until it had to bail out its banks.

Greece has a different set of problems. If you listen to the stereotypes, the Greek's are a profligate nation: they retire earlier than anyone else in Europe, have a huge and inefficient public sector and get well paid for the privilege. The average salary in Greece is €20,000 higher than the average salary in Germany. I was therefore surprised to read on the BBC website that the Greeks pay more tax than pretty much any other Europeans and have higher levels of personal savings too. They also have lower personal borrowings.

As a nation, Italy is suffering from the hangover of debt that was incurred in the decades leading up to the last recession, the one at the beginning of the 1990's. Since then, Italy has balanced its budget and does not borrow to fund its day to day operations (unlike, say, the UK and the USA). Until the current Great Recession, they were slowly paying back the old debt.

The big question is: will the Euro survive? I both like and dislike the Euro: on the one hand, having a single European currency is really useful when travelling or when dealing with invoices for my big work project (it made life so much easier). On the other hand, the current situation was foreseeable 20 years ago during the last recession when Britain exited the ERM (Exchange Rate Mechanism), the Euro's predecessor which tied currency exchange rates together. Ditto 40-odd years ago, when the Bretton-Woods Agreement collapsed.

Monetary union cannot work unless the countries involved give up the rights to control their borrowings, their taxation policies and their budgets to central control. Whether the Eurozone will get to that point is anyone's guess - right now, they're still trying to stick plasters (band-aids) over the wounds instead of biting the bullet. Will we have another credit crunch and a world-wide Depression? Or will the Euro collapse instead?

- Pam (I have no answers)

PS: Most of my background knowledge re Italy, Spain and Greece, I owe to the BBC. Naturally, I can't find the articles on their website when I need them for attribution.

RIP Gary Speed

2011-11-27T22:52:00.001Z

Today, the British football world was shaken with the news of the suicide of the Welsh manager, Gary Speed, who was found hanged at his home this morning. On the surface, he was a man with the world at his feet: happily married with the footballer's dream job of successfully managing his national side. He was a regular pundit on Football Focus and Match of the Day. I didn't know him and yet I was moved to tears while listening to his close friend, Robbie Savage, fielding calls on a football phone-in that rapidly became a tribute program. (Robbie, it was obvious you were crying.)

My heart goes out to his family: his father, his wife and his children. I am truly sorry for your loss. (I have heard no mention of his mother so assume she has predeceased him. If that assumption is wrong, I am very sorry.)

The big question is "Why?". Was it planned? Was it spontaneous? Were you living a double life for years, Gary, hiding depression from absolutely everyone? Maybe we'll never know. Hopefully his wife and children won't be left haunted for years, blaming themselves. The one thing I know about suicide is that, for the person involved, they want what-ever-it-is-tormenting-them to stop and to be at peace. They often don't want to die but they can't see another way to make it stop.

Gary, I hope you are at peace now.

New Scam in Progress

2011-11-12T10:20:00.000Z

I've just had a phone call from someone claiming to be the "Windows Help Desk" and saying that they're getting loads of error messages from my computer and that if I didn't do what they told me immediately, my computer would break down! The background noise sounded like they were calling from a large call centre and the accent was Asian.

Err.... I don't think so. We aren't stupid enough to sign up for a service like that for domestic computers (waste of money) and the people who run those services commercially don't make calls out of the blue on a Saturday. You have to register a problem first with the help-desk - they can't monitor you remotely (companies can, but that's because you log into the company network before you do anything else).

Also, I'm geek enough to know there is nothing wrong with either PC. If there was, I know a reputable business in Uxbridge that'll fix it for a flat fee.

However, someone who didn't have much technical knowledge might get caught out, follow their instructions and download the spy-bot as instructed or pay over the money for the service these scammers are selling.

For heavens sake, if you get a call like this, engage your common sense first and then hang up!

- Pam

The Game

2011-11-11T16:31:00.004Z

I swear I didn't pop into the Barnardo's Charity Shop with buying a suit in mind. I was looking for something - or rather, some things - but my list didn't specifically involve clothing for me. Instead, it covered the "usual": a double boiler for melting wax for candles (always top of the list but unlikely); an un-engraved pewter tankard to be polished up and engraved as one of the numerous 40th birthday presents (so far, I've found 2 in two years); a plain black fleece for DH for work; yarn (maybe); and possibly some clothing for me if something catches my eye. Oh, and to amuse myself, I was playing The Game.

The Game? What game? The "you only have £50 and you need to buy a full wardrobe" game. The rules are simple: you have £50 and the clothes you are currently wearing (including hand bag). You must buy sufficient clothing to get you through a working week and a weekend (including underwear and shoes), plus make-up, toiletries and a bag to carry it all in. Since this is a game, you don't have to buy them in real life.

I think I first invented The Game, when I had to do something similar for real. It was February 1999 and I was spending every weekend and most evenings with DH (DB as he was then). Fridays, I'd normally schlep a bag of clothes in with me to work and then go directly to DH's. One particular Thursday, I stupidly drank wine after giving blood, nearly passed out, and ended up spending the night at DH's rather than drive the 20 miles home. This Friday, I was dreading driving home to get my stuff - it'd take me 4 hours in the Friday evening traffic to get there and back. At about 4.30 in the afternoon, I cooked up a plan and decided I'd go shopping instead. I didn't have a huge amount of money so I set the budget at £50. After an hour's dash through the shops, I had a Head gym bag, a pair of jeans, three tee-shirts, some underwear, socks and a cardigan. I'd already had to buy make-up that morning and I could use DH's toiletries, so they were off the list. I was wearing a trouser suit, loafers, coat and had a handbag. Thus was borne the basic elements of The Game.

Anyway, last Friday, I was wandering through the shops playing The Game. I decided I could keep the clothes and shoes I was wearing (jeans, coat, cardigan, t-shirt, trainers, etc), together with my handbag and its contents (including lipstick, lip balm, sock knitting kit, and a comb). Here's what I "spent":-

£4.47 - Make-up: powder, blusher and mascara (£1.49 each) from Tesco's All About Face range which I reviewed last year. (I decided the powder would stand in as a make-up base and that I could keep the lipstick in my handbag.)
85p cotton wool pads to apply the above makeup.
£2.80 - Toiletries and skin care: value shampoo (64p/litre), value hair conditioner (24p), value cream handwash (37p) which can double as body wash and facial cleanser, value toothbrush (10p), value toothpaste (17p), value twin blade disposable razors for shaving my legs (30p for 10). The cheapest moisturiser is actually quite a good one: Nivea Soft Intensive Moisturising Creme (99p).
£4.50 - Suitcase: second hand from a charity shop. Not the nicest case, but better than a plastic bag.
£18.00 - two work suits (£9.50 and £8.50) - the ones I found in Bernardos.
£6.50 - work shoes: in Oxfam, I found a pair of black shoes suitable for work.
£8 - 4 t-shirts from charity shops.
£1.75 - tights/pantihose: value brand pack of 6.
62p - socks: value brand pack of 3 black socks. (This is the price I paid last time - couldn't find them today.)
£2.50 - panties: value brand pack of 4. (Again, this is the price I paid last time - couldn't find them today.)

Grand total: £49.99. I've priced it up for you, to prove that it is possible. You'll note that there is no nightwear. I decided that I could always sleep in my dirty t-shirt from that day and use my coat as a dressing gown, if I was desperate.

So, anyway, this is the long way around to explain how I purchased two almost-new Marks & Spencer suits in Barnardo's a week or so ago.

- Pam

It pays to shop around

2011-10-26T20:43:00.001Z

I should be fuming.

The Toy turns 11 next month. With his insurance due for renewal, I went on line to compare quotes. His current insurer is quoting me £50/month or a one off payment of £560 for fully comprehensive insurance including business cover - £20/month more than I was paying the same company a year ago. In fact, it's more than I was paying when he was brand new!

Lured by their advertising, I logged onto ~~Comparethemeerkat.com~~ comparethemarket.com and typed in my details. Everything exactly the same. Half-way down the list of insurance quotes was my current insurer, quoting exactly half what they quoted to me. So I phoned my insurer. "Sorry, madam, we can't match that quote....You're an existing customer and that makes you ineligible."

Huh? So you don't want to keep my business then? Good-bye.

Frustrated, I turned back to the quotes on the internet. Directly above my current insurer and £2 cheaper was a subsidiary of the same company. Five minutes later, I've bought identical car insurance through them. And scored a free Meerkat toy, with my own Meerkova Village Parade. Enjoy!

- Pam

Score!

2011-10-17T12:27:00.001Z

Saturday was one of "those" days - a rushing, busy day. DH had to work, then there was football (5.30 kick off) and a party in the evening. Somehow, I got behind in my plans and never caught up, so 8pm saw us dashing into Tesco to buy a gift bag to cover the birthday present. Naturally, being us, we sprinted around the "Condemned Food" sections in order to snaffle up any useful bargains.

Sitting lonely and ignored in the produce aisle were 4 bags of perfectly good mushrooms marked down to 35p! There were plenty of people pawing over the rest of the reduced veg but nobody was paying any attention to the mushrooms. Quickly, I liberated them and walked away. Their combined weight was 3.25kg. Total cost £1.22 (one was a half bag).

Yesterday, we processed the majority for the freezer. Since we didn't have that many onions, we made 3 boxes of "Base", with one of the bags of mushies. The rest were sliced and fried in the remains of the oil/liquid/pot scrapings from the Base, then boxed up in double quantities for the freezer. That filled 4 boxes.

The freezer is full again with 3 meals-worth of base and 8 meals-worth of mushrooms stashed away in take-away food boxes. Not bad for £1.22.

-Pam

The Toy's Trip Report

2011-09-30T19:30:00.001Z

(Or what a little red car did on his holidays.)

Two Monday's ago, I got loaded up with people and stuff and drove to Normandy, France. I had my "passport" (GB sticker).

My ticket (attached to my rear vision mirror).

An awful lot of luggage.

Yet more luggage. (How much do three people need for one week?)

And "the crew" (that's the Boy, the Girl and Howard, our host).

We travelled via the Channel Tunnel, on Le Shuttle. It's quicker than the ferry and much more comfortable if you're a car - no need to worry about some idiot belonging to the vehicle next to you flinging his door open and damaging your paintwork. And, no possibility of sea-sickness. Also, the humans have to stay with their vehicles on Le Shuttle, whereas on a ferry they're forceably removed and made to walk through shops stinking of foul smelling perfumes (which always clings to their clothes. Yuck!).

If you've ever wondered what the inside of the Channel Tunnel looks like, here's a "car's eye view" of the interior of the train:

When we got to the far side, the Boy drove me into Cite Europe for a rest, while the crew went to the bank, bought lunch in Carrefour, stretched their legs and swapped drivers (the Girl did the next stretch). Cite Europe is a shopping mall right beside the Eurotunnel terminal. Must remember for next time that the quickest way to get there is to drive into the Total garage forecourt, then back onto the side road, left at the roundabout and into the car park 200 metres beyond. Otherwise, you have to go the long way round via the motorway and that means adjusting very quickly to French roads.

French roads are a bit strange for us right-hand-drivers. Firstly, we have to remember to drive on their side of the road, not ours, and that means going around roundabouts the wrong way.

See, the Boy is sitting in my driver's seat. It's on the other side to all those left-hand-drive cars. He had to drive sitting almost in the gutter on some roads. Also, it means we have to wear "blinkers" so that our lights don't blind the on-coming foreign cars.

(Do you see that THING stuck on my light? That's a blinker! Like horses wear! As if I'd ever deliberately blind someone. How insulting!)

Driving in France means different speed limits and having to remember to pay attention to the kilometres on my speedo, not the miles. On their motorways, cars drive up to 130km/h (that's over 80 mph), while in towns the speed is usually 50km/h (around 30mph). On the whole, their roads are good: well signposted, smooth surfaces with not many potholes.

Although some cars got a little too close to my rear bumper for my liking, most were very well behaved - only staying in the left lane for long enough to overtake a vehicle before pulling in. And they indicated (unlike London drivers who think that using their indicators costs extra). I soon got over my nerves and was whizzing along pretending that I'm really a Porsche in disguise. Then we got to the Pont Du Normandie.

No photos can do it justice. That bridge is steep. Since it has a peage (toll booth station) at the bottom, you can't even get a good run-up. It even has pedestrians.

We drove from there to Pegasus Bridge, near Caen. The British captured the Bridge on the night before the D-Day landings. I drove over the replica/replacement. It looks the same but it's larger and stronger than the original.

It was named for the emblem of the Paratroopers who liberated it. Their story is told in the film, The Longest Day, starring Richard Todd. In real life, Todd was one of the reinforcements on the mission.

The original bridge is now in the museum beside the canal. The first allied soldier to be killed by the enemy during the D-Day landings, Lt Brotheridge, died on that bridge. There is a plaque to mark the spot. Someone had left fresh flowers there on the day we visited.

The humans tell me that, if you get the chance, the museum is well worth a visit. As well as the original bridge, it also has a replica of the Horsa gliders the men flew in to capture the Bridge. (The originals didn't survive the conflict.)

The replica was built by engineering enthusiasts to the original plans. It's mainly made of plywood. Must have been a scary flight, not much in the way of brakes or steering and no engine.

From Pegasus Bridge, we continued on our way into the heart of the Normandy peninsula, to the farm house where we stayed. We visited shops and markets, etc, but I think I'll leave the rest story to another day. Time to park up my wheels and rest.

Good night.

- Toy

For Amy

2011-09-24T16:05:00.000Z

We're on holiday in Normandy for the week. On Tuesday, we visited the American Cemetery Normandy, high on the bluffs over Omaha Beach.

It is a peaceful but windswept place. The edge of the cemetery looks down over the dunes and cliffs onto the beach. While there couldn't be a more fitting place for the American cemetery than the bluffs over Omaha Beach, it is amazing that anyone survived. Looking down, you wonder how anyone could have made it off the beach alive.

Standing on the beach, you marvel at the peace and the lack of ghosts, after the horrors that were the D-Day landings.

We weren't alone at the Cemetery. Everywhere were small groups of people come to pay their own respects. One was a small party of veterans and their wives doing a wreath-laying ceremony at the memorial. Their shoulders had that certain stiffness people have when they're trying not to show they're crying. (We didn't photograph them - that would have been intrusive, but you can see their wreath in the photo below.)

We were there to pay respects of our own. The great-uncle of a friend, Amy, is buried there. He died on D-Day, 6th June 1944, a young man who gave his life and his future so that Europe would be free of the tyranny that was the Nazis.

Putting flowers on his grave is the least that I could do, Amy.

- Pam

Happy Anniversary Darling

2011-09-13T18:12:00.000Z

Eight years today. And every day is wonderful.

- Pam

Dodged a bullet. Possibly.

2011-09-05T20:43:00.000Z

On Friday, I finished my latest pair of Prom Socks and decided, reluctantly, to give them to a friend for her birthday.

They're in Regia Marrakesh, colourway Sylt 5497. I really like it. In fact, I liked it so much that I decided to buy another ball, to make a pair for myself instead of just making a pair of Use-Em-Up socks with the leftovers from this pair.

About 10 minutes after I finished the socks, I was on-line searching for a replacement skein. Google to the rescue. There weren't many options listed, so I felt really lucky when I found a skein at the very yarn shop who owned the stand at Ally Pally where I'd purchased the ball in the first place! Web of Wool.

An alarm bell chimed softly in the back of my mind when I saw the website address. It wasn't the store name, but the website looked legitimate so I rationalised that maybe they were using a hosting service. Everything went well, including the "thank you for registering at our website" email, until I tried to pay for my purchase. Then I got an error message from WorldPay:

Sorry, there was an error in processing this transaction: The information sent from the merchant's site is invalid or incomplete. Please send the following information to the merchant:
The transaction cannot be processed due to one or more of the following:
the merchant account is suspended
the order currency you selected is not supported
the authorisation mode is incorrect
test mode is unavailable
the installation is not live

Since it was after 10pm, I thought that maybe the site was down for maintenance. Just to be sure, I emailed Web of Wool to report the error message by replying to the "thank you for your order" email I received from them. I also emailed the Hotmail address quoted on the website. When both of those bounced, I tried the "Contact us" page. That didn't bounce. I hadn't paid anything - I hadn't entered my payment details anywhere - but I didn't want that ball of yarn sold out from under me.

I was a bit concerned that I didn't hear anything from them on Saturday or Sunday, so this morning I tried to phone them. The number was disconnected. Huh?

Back to Google. This time, my Google-fu turned up a discussion on a knitting club's board. It was nearly two years old but talked about poor customer service, non-delivery of orders after the money had been taken, unanswered emails and non-returned phone messages. The writers talked about reporting Web of Wool to Trading Standards. I posted on the Midlands UK Crafter's Board on Ravelry: has Web of Wool closed? A kind Raveler responded and said yes. She linked to the forums on the Laughing Hen website. And there I got a definitive answer: Trading Standards had taken Web of Wool to court and got a judgement against them; effectively, they closed them down.

It looks like I dodged a bullet, since I hadn't paid any money or given any payment details, I'm not out of pocket. Beware, though, if your search for a yarn shop turns up this website for Web of Wool, it's an archive and not functioning.

- Pam

Tightening My Belt

2011-08-31T22:18:00.002Z

For most of my working life, the last working day of the month has been Pay Day. This morning, as usual, I did my accounts. Using the cash book pages in my Filofax, I listed my income and my outgoings. While I do this every month, today I had a bigger incentive - having watched the numbers closely in June and July, I made the decision in August to save and invest more money. And now, I wanted to see what the effect would be on my bank account. (Yes, that's right, while I can run scenarios in Excel until the cows come home for work, I never seem to get around to doing it for myself. Wishful thinking numbers, yes [e.g. daydream scenarios of lottery wins]. Real numbers, no.)

So, this morning, I added my salary payment to the balance in my bank account, deducted money for the joint account, my savings accounts, Weight Watchers, Audible, the Housekeeping money, my share ISA, £180 to the Petrol/Diesel Accrual, and £180 to my Money to Live Off. I went to write down the next line:, "credit card repay", and stopped. Staring me in the face was a brutal truth: I'd been too cocky with my calculations when I changed the savings and investment numbers. No matter how many times I added up the numbers - and most of them are the same each month - there was no way I could avoid what I was seeing. If I was to maintain my debt pay down levels something would have to give. I had a shortfall of £35.

£35. Not a huge some of money. There have been times when I've spent that much on a meal out. But it was £35 more than I earn. £35 I don't have.

I stared at the numbers. I started arguing with myself. I baulked at cutting the debt pay-down money. It made me nauseous to think about it. I also rebelled at cutting my savings and investments. Just couldn't do it - that money is needed for future things, important things, for which I have plans. That left little else to choose from: my Sanity Fund? No! Everyone needs a Sanity Fund and mine is only £60/month (earmarked for a pressure canner, clothes and craft supplies). Cut out Weight Watchers? No, even though I don't go to meetings any more, I need access to their website to track my points.

ARRRGGHHH!!!!!

In the end, I decided it'd have to be split equally between my Money To Live Off and the Petrol/Diesel Accrual, which is money I allocate to pay for fuel for the car during the month. £17.50 off each. It's not going to be easy. I'd already cut my Money to Live Off back so that I could save more money. Now it's £162.50 a month to pay for everything I might need and/or want: birthday presents, social events, music for choir, hair cuts, clothes, software, books, DVDs, dental visits, etc, etc. Seems like a lot of money until you realise that a round of four drinks at the pub quiz can cost over £12.

The effects on the Petrol/Diesel Accrual will be even harsher. At current prices, it's down to little more than 4 tanks-worth of diesel a month. I usually go through one tank a week in a normal-commute-to-work-week. As long as a tank of diesel stays below £40, then I should have a little time to save up for the next 5-week month. That will be March; September won't qualify because we're taking a holiday and December includes work's Christmas shut down.

Fingers crossed I get a salary increase when the pay reviews are done in December. I'd like my £35 spending money back, please.

- Pam

The Fruits of my Labours

2011-08-27T11:42:00.004Z

Two weekends ago, DH's best friend sent me a text message: would I like some sloes for sloe gin? "Yes, please," I replied. Monday night, he arrived at our door with 2kg of sloes and a further 3.5kg of crab apples. Unfortunately, he picked one of my busier weeks. I would only have Saturday with which to make anything.

On Saturday, I started the process of making crab apple jelly: washed, chopped and boiled the fruit, then drained it through a jelly bag. (Note: copying an idea from the Cottage Small Holder, I added dried chillies to the fruit before I boiled it, in order to add a bit of zing.)

Saturday night while the apple juice dripped, we made sloe gin, pricking the sloes while sitting on the couch watching the football highlights from Match of the Day. The recipe is from a wonderful website, Sloe.biz. (In case you've never encountered them, sloes are small, very sour members of the plum family, native to Britain.) The sloes will macerate in the gin for another three months before I attempt to decant them and make sloe gin chocolates .

Sunday, I only had time to put the drained juice into the fridge, dump the pulp into a bowl and refrigerate that too. Fast forward to this morning, when I finally had time to make jelly.

The above was two hours hard work, plus several hours tracking down jars. Hopefully the condensation won't be a problem in the clip-lid jars. The others are sealed with wax circles and cellophane.

Tonight, I'll rub the pulp through a sieve and make Crab Apple Chilli Cheese, another Cottage Small Holder recipe. Hopefully, I can rustle up enough jars.

- Pam

How this Child of the Sun keeps warm in the cold

2011-08-26T19:25:00.000Z

(Thanks to sheep, basically.)

A couple of weeks ago, my darling older sister sent me a white woollen cowl for my birthday. It's lovely and snuggly and came with an unspoken message, "This is to keep you warm in that cold country where you live". (That's OK. We both feel the cold. I knit her socks. She moved to Queensland to keep warm; inexplicably to her, I moved to Britain and revel when it snows.)

The week before my birthday, it was warm - really warm, the sort of summer days we don't see very often in Britain, when your limbs are bathed in warm air and the sun shines. It reminded me that I am a child of the Sun; I was born at the beginning of spring in a land where spring last a month and summer goes on and on and on. (Melbourne's spring is August, remember.) My favourite Greek god is Apollo. When I feel sunshine on my face, it makes me smile. Sunshine always lifts my mood.

Thursday of last week, London was colder than Melbourne. Today, it rained again. Our summer has deteriorated into a stereotypical British one.

My love affair with wool began when I was a child. Although winter is short in Oz, it is relatively cold in the southern states and it does snow on high ground. We have excellent ski fields. Growing up, it was very rare for houses to have central heating. Schools did. Offices and public buildings did. But most homes relied on a single heater in the lounge. If temperature was considered at all when they were built, it was with a view to keeping the house cool in summer. Winter wasn't usually a consideration.

My grade 2 teacher, Mrs Cooper, taught all our class to knit, both girls and boys. It enchanted me. Begging yarn from my mum, I created something that, in theory, was meant to become a scarf but turned into some weird trapezoid shape instead. Two years later, I knitted my first jumper, something mustard coloured in acrylic. It was probably Red Heart.   Three or four projects later, I graduated to pure wool. I've knitted dozens of projects since and wool is always my first choice fibre.

During my first 10 years in the UK, I mainly lived in properties that didn't have central heating. In winter, I had a recurring dream. I'd dream of merino sheep about to be sheared. The shearer would turn the sheep onto its back and, instead of being sheared, the sheep would wriggle out of a sheepskin coat. Once free of the coat, it looked the same as if it had been sheared. I wanted that coat. I craved that coat. But there was nowhere to buy one in Britain and I probably couldn't afford it anyway if I did find one. In Oz, I could buy sheepskin moccasins at the market but I was told "Skinny's" had gone bankrupt and with that went the only source of sheepskin coats I knew. (On every visit to Melbourne, I go to the Queen Victoria Market and buy another pair of moccasins; it is almost a ritual.)

I'd acquired my first sheepskin mittens a.k.a. ugg gloves, when I was 10.   It was the mid-1970's and sheepskin gloves, mittens, coats and boots were all the rage. (There were ugg boots and gloves long before Brian Smith trade marked the name in the USA.).    We always had sheepskin moccasin slippers

Throughout my early British winters, I wished for those mittens. When I went home for my mum's funeral in 1994, they were one of the things I brought back in my hand luggage. In winter, my hands were always cold. The mittens were fine, but you had to take them off to do anything dexterous, such as turn the pages of a book or dig out your train pass. Inevitably, I spent a fortune on gloves, trying to find the magical pair that would keep my hands warm. Finally, in about 1997, I scored a pair of sheepskin gloves. They were (and are) wonderful. I wore them until the stitching around the thumb gave out, then put them away until I could fix them, which I did last winter.

I also worked my way through multiple coats; always trying to find one warmer than the last. It's really hard finding a cloth coat that the wind can't penetrate. That took forever to achieve; eventually, I found a cashmere and wool blend, Cossack-style coat in a shop in Ealing. Sadly, after 13 winters of being worn to work, it's beginning to die. At the very least, the pure silk lining needs to be replaced.

The advent of the internet was a godsend for my cold feet. I found a British company that made sheepskin products, Celtic Sheepskin. I can't speak more highly of this company. DH gave me a pair of their "Celt boots" for Christmas 4 or 5 years ago. Another present was a pair of sheepskin slippers, which he gave me when my last pair of Aussie moccasins gave out. Last year, I treated myself to a pair of their sheepskin lined walking boots; perfect for going to the football on cold winters days. These are all my "sheep feet"; a wardrobe of sheepskin footwear, wonderful on cold winter's days when I need to go out or indoors when I don't want to turn up the central heating.

While I lust after their coats, in particular their toscana ones, I'd need to win the lottery to afford one. Instead, I've had lucky charity shop finds. Seven years ago, I found a cream, hooded, sheepskin car-coat. Asking price, £12. The zip was broken and the pockets were full of rubbish. I pointed out the broken zip; they sold it to me for half price. A replacement zip cost £5 and several hours of swearing. Dry-cleaning was £35 (and I got complements for my zip replacement job from the drycleaner). This is "the sheep", which I wear to football and for other freezing-cold-but-casual occasions.

Winter 2009, I scored another sheepskin coat in another charity shop! This time, it was a slim-fitting, 3/4 length chocolate brown toscana coat. My hands shook as I paid them the £15 asking price, since I knew it'd retail for closer to £800 (I didn't tell them that). It's shorter than I'd like (my legs get cold), but the only major downside is no pockets.   It's my other "wear to work" coat.

I've always had a daydream that, one day, I'd keep my own sheep. Looking at the list of sheepskin products I have above, I think I've already got 2 or 3. And these ones don't need feeding. Or shearing.   :o)

- Pam (got 10 or 20 more sheep in the stash, but we won't go there today)

Proms were attended

2011-08-18T06:18:00.001Z

Thursday night, DH and I went to the Proms , where we saw the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra perform together with Dejan Lazic play Brahms' 'Piano Concerto No. 3' in D major (reworked from the violin concerto), and Julian Lloyd-Webber play Holst's Invocation. The music was beautiful but, seriously, Julian, you're 62 - get a decent haircut!

The highlight was Elgar's Enigma Variations, glorious as always. Nimrod was over far too fast. My other favourite movement is the one describing Dan the dog falling into the river and barking when he got out (see the program notes available on the above link). It is very evocative.

Friday night was another Prom, the Film Music Prom performed by the BBC Concert Orchestra. It started life as part of a celebration of ten years of Wittertainment a.k.a. Mark Kermode's and Simon Mayo's film reviews (available on BBC Radio 5 and as podcasts on i-Tunes. Well worth a listen). A couple of weeks ago, I caught up with the podcast episode where Mark, Simon, Keith Lockhart (the conductor) and some guests debated what music to include. It was a pleasure to finally hear it all performed live.

Highlights? Star Wars, of course. And the theme music from Murder on the Orient Express has been playing in my head for the last few days. Also, having not seen the film, I didn't realise that the shower scene in Psycho went on for so long or that the knife was wielded quite so many times.

Finally, on Saturday, we went to the Comedy Prom which was lead by Tim Minchin. Lots of comic songs and very funny guests (Kit and the Widow are brilliant. So are the Mongrels, I'd like to catch their BBC TV series now). It'll be broadcast on BBC2 on August 27th and I'll be taping it to watch again.

- Pam

PS: Prom Socks were knitted throughout these events. When you sit in the gods (a.k.a. the Circle) the performers can't see you, so knitting quietly on wooden needles (no clack-clack) is fine.

True confessions of a yarn addict

2011-07-27T20:29:00.000Z

I really should stay away from yarn shops.

At lunchtime today, I went to Hobbycraft to buy a couple of row counters. All the ones I've got are in use and I'll need one for my next project. Naturally, I browsed the yarn aisles, while I was there. I had to - the knitting notions were buried in the middle. I wasn't looking for anything - normally, I can resist the yarns at Hobbycraft because many have that cheap-and-nasty plastic acrylic feel. Not today.

On an end-cap, I found a shelf of something that intrigued me: Palette's Vintage, a worsted weight 70% wool, 30% soy blend. The label knocked me for six - you never see a yarn labeled "worsted" in this country, it just doesn't exist. If you didn't like brown, there wasn't a huge number of other skeins: 9 white ("Macadamia"), 6 blue ("Enamel"), 9 red ("Red Bud") and 20-odd brown ("Otter"). But there was no price. I nabbed a shop assistant, who checked - it was 99p a ball and the stuff on the shelf was all they had.

The yarn-lust took hold of me. Worsted weight? Less than a Pound a ball? And it's 70% wool? I stared at it for a few minutes. Was there enough to make a sweater? I did a swift calculation in my head, 9 balls at 125m/ball is 1125 metres of yarn. Not quite enough for, say, a Must Have Cardigan. I scrabbled on my phone to access Ravelry; was there anything suitable in my favourites that didn't use much yarn? Amy Christoffers' Acer Cardigan fitted the bill. As did Bonne Marie Burns' Basic Chick V-Neck Cardigan and her Twist. I could knit an entire garment for £8.91! That's my sort of price.

In the end, I couldn't decide between the red and the white. At 99p a ball, I decided I didn't have to.

- Pam (It's not stash enhancement if you have a pattern for it; it's project acquisition)

Taking frugality to extremes

2011-07-25T20:37:00.002Z

Louisa at the Really Good Life raised an interesting point on her most recent blog: when you take frugality to extremes, how far is too far? Although I replied over there, I thought I'd spend a minute or two here working out my thoughts on the subject.

To me, extreme frugality is akin to being miserly – it’s forgetting about the “living” part of “living below your means”. If it makes your quality of life suffer, then it’s too extreme. Frugality for me is about making choices that enhance my life but keep me within my budget. Back in March 2009, Channel 4 ran a program, The Hunt for Britain's Tightest Person where a woman demonstrated how to bathe in a bucket in the kitchen - something she had to do because her boiler had been broken for months and she hadn't bothered to get it fixed. She had the money to fix it but she preferred to boil the kettle and wear extra layers in winter rather than spend money on her boiler. Winter 2009 was very cold - we had two weeks where the temperature didn't get to zero - and I remember thinking she'd flipped over the edge from frugal to miser.

For me, frugality is making the best use of your resources. It may be about getting the best price for something, or buying the best quality item you can afford or ensuring you have cash set aside for car repairs, etc. However, it is also about living the best life you can on the budget you've got. It's living a champagne lifestyle but only spending beer money to obtain it. It isn't about depriving yourself for the sake of it or being a martyr to the cause. Yes, you have to make choices because nobody can afford everything, but it's about making the choice to spend money in ways that reflect your goals and dreams.

- Pam

Entering the Lion's Den AKA Purl City Yarns

2011-07-23T12:35:00.000Z

On a back street, five minutes walk from Manchester's Piccadilly Gardens, is a knitterly haven: Purl City Yarns. I staggered in there yesterday afternoon laden with laptop, trolley case, etc, and, within seconds, wished it was my LYS. The staff were incredibly friendly and encouraged me to dump my bags by the couch and take a good look round.

When I planned my work trip to Manchester this week, one of the things on my wish-list was this visit to Purl City Yarns. I'd seen their ads in the knitting press as had the other customer who came in while I was there - she'd heard me say as much to the owner and chimed in "me, too!" producing a battered knitting magazine from her bag, open at the page showing their advertisement.

Purl City Yarns stands on a street corner, with windows on both exposed sides. In a former life, I think it was a typical British "corner shop" (think Open All Hours meets an Aussie milk bar). Certainly, it sold ice-creams - the shop's threshold carries an advertisement for them. The walls are covered in shelving, while two welcoming couches occupy the foreground of the shop. The counter is at the back, tucked against the stairs, with their needle and hook displays beyond that. I think, upstairs is a classroom.

The shop is small but very well organised, with yarns displayed by weight and then by brand. They even had a section labeled "Worsted Weight", which is almost impossible to find in this country (we have to substitute Aran, which is fractionally thicker). It was full of yarns I'd only heard about before: Zealana, Noro, Austerman, Drops; as well as ones I know/already own: Blacker Designs yarns, Fiberspates, The Natural Dye Studio and Debbie Bliss. What they don't carry are the standard yarns you can buy at Hobbycraft, i.e. Sirdar and Rowan. Also, I didn't spot any 100% acrylics. (That alone earns them a big gold star in my book - no plastic masquerading as wool. Blech!)

Luckily for my no-stash-enhancement-goal, no yarns leaped out and screamed "buy me". That isn't to say I left the shop empty handed. I didn't. I just wasn't inspired to buy yarn. Instead, I bought the three sizes of crochet hooks I'll need to make the Moth Wing Shrug from last summer's Interweave Crochet and a large bottle of eucalyptus scented Eucalan wool wash.

They've been open since last November and are filling a much-needed void. Knit-Night is Wednesdays, from 5 to 8. Next time I travel to visit my Manchester project team, I plan to be there.

- Pam (giving them 5 out of 5)

I broke it!

2011-07-20T06:20:00.000Z

My beloved Contigo travel mug that is. -(

It is 7am. I'm on the train to Manchester. Going there for 3 day's work. Being frugal, and a coffee snob, I thought it was a good idea to pack my own coffee so I loaded up the Contigo. I rested my mug on my case while I retrieved my ticket from the machine and promptly forgot about it. I was too busy panicking because i'd just realised my train was at 10 to 7 rather than 10 past and I only had a minute to get to the platform! My mug rolled off my case, hit the concrete floor with a heavy "Thunk!", landed on the side of its lid and now leaks.

Thank God I'm wearing a coat because I'm now wearing half my coffee on it!

If I tilt the mug, coffee pours from the self-seal mechanism. If I push the button to drink, it pours out from below the drinking spot, from around the lid. Damn! Damn!! Damn!!!

- Pam

Frugal Friday: Sweating Your Assets

2011-07-15T16:30:00.001Z

There was a thread on Ravelry recently about saving money for the down-payment on a house. It got me thinking about how buying a house is more than just buying the roof over your head. There's a business concept called "sweating your assets", which is where you maximise the usage of your assets to get the most value out of them. The classic business example is where a manufacturing plant introduces a second or third shift in order to make as much product as possible without having to purchase another factory.

How this applies to owning a home is all about making the most of that house and the land it sits on while doing the things that cost nary a penny. Our house is tiny by American/Australian standards, coming in at less than 900 square feet (that's less than 9 "squares" in Australian terminology). Our back garden is approximately 70 feet long by 22 feet wide, including the patio and a concrete pad at the far end. Thanks to the shared drive, our front garden is even narrower and about 15 feet deep.

Sweating our assets means maximising our living space and our storage space while still living within the footprint of our house, so that our home is a welcoming, happy and efficient place to be. Consider the layout of your home, would the lounge work better if you moved the door six feet to the left? Ours does. And it makes the room look much bigger as a result.

It's about having a productive but pretty garden, growing vegetables and fruit trees alongside the flowering shrubs, a la Alys Fowler or Mother Chaos or The Cottage Smallholder, so that we can lower ourfood bill, do our bit for the environment, acquire a hobby and improve our quality of living all in one stroke. One thing I have to do this weekend is phone the garden designer whose services I won in a charity auction and book my alotted hour of her time. Hopefully, she'll give me a managable plan for the wilderness we own. (If I could borrow anyone for a week, it would be Alys Fowler. I always loved her segments on Gardeners World, I love her writing (see these posts for the BBC) and I wish she was back on our TV screens.)

And, finally, it's about using things that are free or that I've already paid for instead of forking out my hard earned cash for something new. It's asking myself: "Do I need a new dress/shoes/whatever?" when there are four perfectly good ones in the wardrobe that only need an iron to become presentable and usable again. Oh, and using one of these to dry our wash efficiently in the garden instead of running the drier (we don't even own one).

- Pam

Cut off

2011-06-22T10:56:00.000Z

I left my mobile phone at home this morning. It's amazing how bereft I feel without it, considering that I can count on one hand the number of phone calls I make on it during the average working week. But it's my main way of communicating with DH during the day.

I realise it's the ability to communicate easily with him that I miss. Sure he can call my work number and I've got his mobile number if I need to call him, but I can't dash off a quick text about something unimportant but informative (e.g. "Went to butcher, bought x, y & z for freezer" or "dinner tonight, will cook Y. If you get home before me, please chop onions, mushrooms & garlic"). I use texts for things that aren't time sensitive but keep him informed about what I'm up to or to make him smile; the sort of things you'd use an email for but he doesn't regularly access his email during the day.

Today, I'd like to wish DH luck when he gives blood this afternoon. And to tell him that I'll try packing "Junior", my carry-on suitcase when I get home so that he doesn't have to dig the next largest one out of storage.

[ sigh ]

I'll just have to remember to tell him when I get home.

- Pam

Hello Stranger

2011-06-17T18:20:00.000Z

I can't believe it's been 3 weeks since I blogged! Where did the time go?

So, what have I been up to? In chronological order, I've: sung in a concert; helped run a games convention; found some RPG-playing knitters and co-foundered The Order of the Pointy Sticks ("greetings fellow Minions!"); driven to/from Scotland to attend DH's best friend's father's funeral; rehearsed for a concert in France; watched England play Switzerland at Wembley; gardened a bit; spent the day with a friend from the Motley Fool who was en-route to Portugal; visited the BBC; and knitted a lot. I'll give you some potted highlights.

The Concert

On Saturday 21st May, my choir performed Purcell's Funeral Music for Queen Mary; Holst's Choral Fantasia, Rutter's Psalm 150 and the Rutter Gloria. Although the Rutter was lovely ("Utterly Rutterly" according to our conductor), a lot of the concert was music to slit your wrists by: sorrowful, heartfelt and full of pain. Perfect music for Goths. This is particularly true of the Choral Fantasia, which I keep referring to as "A hymn for the damned".

Given that I was mourning one death and expecting another, I found the drum and brass intro to the Purcell to be especially painful. If you need a choir and brass ensemble for a funeral, let me know.... In the meantime, we leave on concert tour on Thursday. We're off to Nancy to sing Faure's Requiem with the Choeur Nancy Ducale on Saturday night.

The Games Convention and the Order of the Pointy Sticks

Shadow-Con is two days of RPG's, mayhem and dice which ~~drives DH to distraction~~ DH organises every Spring Bank Holiday Weekend, aided and abetted by a group of ~~press-ganged~~ willing volunteers. This year was more fraught than normal because BF was already in Scotland, having dashed up when his dad took a turn for the worse, and thus could not do his usual share of the workload (printing tickets, manning the front desk, buying some of the stuff for the Tuck Shop, setting up on the Friday night and operating the heart of the sun a.k.a. the coal-fired barbecue we use on the Saturday night of the Con). DH shouldered most of it.

My usual chores are manning the Tuck Shop, ordering and fetching the meat for the barbecue and doing the Saturday morning bacon butty run. This year, I spent several hours re-creating the tickets (unobtainable because the file/template is on BF's computer), shopped for Tuck Shop and barbecue (I was comparison shopping for the barbecue when I found the Arnott's BBQ Shapes) helped set up on the Friday night, ordered outdoor lighting for the barbecue. My reward: I got to listen to the cricket when I was in the Tuck Shop and I got to play in a couple of games for free.

I was on duty in the Tuck Shop on the Saturday, and knitting on my latest sock, when I discovered TWO MORE crafters: a knitter and a crochetter. I'd already outed a third in a Cthulhu game about 9 months ago, and before Saturday was over the four of us girls were talking patterns, comparing projects and swapping Ravelry IDs. By close of play on Sunday, we'd formed The Order of the Pointy Sticks and started trying to arrange meet ups. After ten years of wishing, Ladies and Gentlemen, I've found a knitting group.

Lots and lots of knitting

The body and sleeves of the Willow sweater are done.

After weeks of easy motoring, I'm now working on the yoke. It's a complex, cabled pattern, knitted sideways, that isn't charted. I don't think it can be because of the numerous short rows. This is the first time in ages, I've had to work cables from the written pattern and it's hard. I'm sure it requires far more concentration than working from a chart. If anyone knows how to chart short rows, please let me know, I've got 8 repeats of 45 rows of this.

In the meantime, I needed something more mindless to knit while playing RPG's on Sundays, so I cast on the Three Hour Sweater in Rowan's RYC Cotton Jeans from my stash. The colourway is Blue Wash. This pattern is famous/infamous on Ravelry: it's a vintage, 1930's sweater knitted on big needles to fit a vintage size 16 (supposedly a modern US size 8). The gauge is 4 stitches to the inch. The needle sizes given in the pattern are obviously modern add-ons - 1930's Americans didn't use the metric system.

(I'm knitting it in the round instead of flat.) Most knitters have had to modify it to fit their size, including me - my modifications can be found here. So far, it's taken me about 8 hours.

And, finally, here are my latest socks for DH in Lang's Jawoll Magic.

Simple, plain vanilla, mindless socks. Yay!

- Pam

News flash!

2011-05-25T14:10:00.000Z

Asda sell Arnott's BBQ Shapes! Yay!

Sadly did not spot Tim Tams. Boo!

Still better than nothing for this expat Aussie.

- Pam (the great Tim Tam quest continues)

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I'm feeling fine....

2011-05-22T09:50:00.000Z

Except, it hasn't ended. If you were a follower of Harold Camping, how foolish would you feel now?

It's people like Camping that make me hate fundamentalists, people who ask you to believe without question, without providing evidence. More to the point, how many fundamentalist preachers ask their followers to bankroll them? (And make themselves rich off their labours of their much poorer followers.) A lot, particularly in the States. Remember Jim and Tammy Bakker? Their followers paid for solid gold taps in their bathroom. And they aren't the only ones - Wikipedia has a long list of scandals, some financial, some sexual, where preachers have used and abused their positions of power.

- Pam (wondering how Camping will wriggle out of it this time.)

Knitting photos

2011-05-21T09:50:00.000Z

A new use for garden furniture:

This is DH's new sweater drying in the shade in garden. I don't have a sweater dryer but our garden furniture is made our of a coated mesh, which works beautifully.

The body of the Willow jumper, knitted in the round:

The sleeves at 39cm/15.5 inches, knitted in the round, two at at time, using magic loop:

(No idea why these two photos are such different colours - they were taken seconds apart in exactly the same place without the use of the flash.)

Only once before have I ever tried to knit sleeves two at a time and that was just a couple of inches on a jumper my sister had started but fallen out of love with. I hated it. The stitches were crammed on the needle (she was using 14 inch straights) and the two balls of yarn kept tangling. It put me off for at least 30 years. However, I was listening to the Knitmore Girls and Jasmin kept singing the praises of knitting sleeves in the round, two at a time using magic loop, so I thought I'd give it a go. After all, what could be better than a) sleeves that are identical in both length and increases, and b) no seams to sew?

Apart from a bit of pfaffing around setting it all up on the needle, I'm a convert. Without any effort, the yarn isn't tangling. Even my annoyance has worn off at having to regularly slide things around the needle. I'm particularly proud of the sleeve "seams".

Thanks to a class I took with Annie Modesit, I knew how to do left leaning and right leaning increases in the knit stitch, but it took a minute or two to work out how to do them purlwise.

- Pam

Just a quickie

2011-05-20T15:56:00.000Z

I'd like to thank everyone for their kind words. I do appreciate them.

I'm on leave for the next week, so I'm hoping to get some blogging mojo back, plus post pictures of my more recent FO's. The only concrete plans I have are rehearsals tonight/tomorrow afternoon for a concert tomorrow night, and a visit to the butcher on Monday. (Why Monday? There's a 10% discount on Mondays.) Oh, and since I seem to be zooming through the sleeves for the Willow jumper, I'm planning to swatch for the next project in my Ravelry queue.

Have a good weekend everyone.

- Pam

Score!

2011-05-19T19:25:00.001Z

Look what I scored in a charity shop near work, when I popped out to go to Waitrose for a quick grocery shop:

a lovely, handmade aran sweater in DH's size. It cost all of £4.99. (That's the price-tag you can see). Someone went to a lot of trouble to make this. I think it's in DK weight yarn, so it must have taken months. Just take a close look at this seam:

No idea why it ended up in a charity shop, but I'm glad I found a home for it.

- Pam

In search of tea and sympathy

2011-05-16T22:38:00.000Z

There are some days you don't want to repeat. Mine started with a telephone call - Eldest, my sister, rang me at 7am to tell me that my dad's second youngest brother died overnight. (Dad was oldest of four.) He was 89 or so and was widowed 2 years ago. He didn't have children. The funeral is on Thursday and I won't be flying home.

I'm left mourning the might-have-beens. We weren't close. I barely knew him and can count on one hand the number of times I met his wife. Thanks to things I don't really understand, my mother took against my aunt and blamed her for all sorts of horrible things. (To excuse my mum, her military service ended with a major head injury and we don't really know what damage was done. Mum blamed Aunty for her head injury amongst other things, even though they didn't meet for another 4 or 5 years.)

The net effect is that we were excluded from all sorts of family functions over the years. It saddens me that we didn't know relatives who lived just a couple of miles away. You know how many families pass down stories from one generation to the next, say, of great-uncle Tommy who used to liven up parties with a standup routine and was decorated at the Somme but was too modest to say why? Well, I don't have any of that. There are stories out there, but I've never heard them.

All I can do now is reach out to my cousins and hope, when they think of me, they think kindly thoughts. I've spoken to my cousin, who's taken on the next-of-kin duties with some moral support from Eldest. I think I'll phone her again soon. She's a lovely person, who I always go to visit when I go back to Australia. I'd like to know her better.

- Pam

Talking about money - the Housekeeping

2011-05-14T09:59:00.000Z

(Yay! Blogger is working agan. For a while there, I was worried that Google had completely screwed it up.)

Yesterday was the first Friday afternoon in months where I had the house to myself. DH has started a full time job with regular hours, 9 to 6. It's not in his field - it's in retail, whereas he's a design engineer who's always worked in manufacturing - and the pay is just above minimum wage, but knowing that he'll have regular money coming in and receive his statutory benefits (sick pay, holiday pay, etc) is a great relief. It also means we can start looking forward instead of staying in fire-fighting mode.

As a result, last weekend, we spent an hour or so going over our finances. One of the hot topics was what to do with our housekeeping kitty. Until now, we've been drawing cash each month and stashing it in various pots:

Groceries: £120 (farm shop, wine and all supermarket shopping)
Meat fund: £ 40 (includes fish from Costco.)
Christmas: £ 10 (also used for Easter Eggs)
Bulk fund: £ 10 (for Costco visits, WingYip visits, special deals at the supermarket, etc)
Total    £180 (£90 each)

The Meat, Christmas and Bulk funds are left to accumulate until there is a reason to spend them, whereas the Grocery kitty rarely has anything left at the end of the month. If there are bargains to stock up on, we raid the Bulk Fund. I've thought for a while that £10/month isn't suffiicent and that's one of the things we agreed about on Sunday, upping it by £5 each to £20/month.

One of my permanent niggles is that we don't put money aside for the garden. At the moment, either we pay for it individually and suck up the cost or then go through the drawn out process of getting it back from our joint savings account (an internet account that doesn't allow you to transfer money anywhere - you have to go to an ATM or request a cheque).   I don't know exactly how much we spent last year on the garden but it was under £100.

One of DH's permanent niggles is that we have these "funds" sitting around in cash for months at a time, not earning interest. It was also one of the reasons that he's previously vetoed a garden fund - he didn't like the idea of leaving that cash lying around for 9 months of the year.

On Sunday, we reached a compromise: we'd start a garden fund but it'd be saved in ING instead of in cash. Ditto the bulk fund and ditto the Christmas fund. The garden fund would be £10/month. Bulk is to go up and Christmas is to remain the same as before. In ING, they'll have their own accounts and it's easy to get reimbursed since we can transfer the money bank-to-bank.

So, our new housekeeping budget is as follows:-

Groceries:    £120
Meat Fund:   £ 40
Christmas:    £ 10
Garden         £ 10
Bulk fund:     £ 20
Total:          £200   or £100 each a month.

- Pam

There's an App for That

2011-04-30T11:05:00.000Z

A month ago, I finally succumbed and bought an iPhone4. It's only taken me 3 (or is it 4?) years. I think I started my "iPhone fund" when they were first released. I've wanted a smart phone forever - I like the concept of the multi-purpose device: phone, camera, pocket computer, portable internet access - but the iPhone was something better. It may not have the best camera or the best battery life, but one big thing makes it market leader. And the thing that makes it better? The Apps.

The Apps are Apple's genius. Anyone can develop an App and sell it through the App store. And that immediately gave Apple competitive advantage over their rivals. Want to keep notes on your future projects? KnitMinder does that. Need to convert currency? There's an App for that.   Want to catalogue your novels? My Library does that by reading the bar-codes on the back of your books. There are Apps for budgeting, for counting calories, for mapping the route of your morning run.

It was (what?) another year before the competition caught up? And that involved them adopting a third-party operating system, Android, so that they could offer a large enough customer base to make it worthwhile for developers to create Apps for their phones too.

All this is a long preamble to explaining why I forked out £429 on an iPhone. I did look at the competition but, in the end, it was one App that swung it in favour of the iPhone, the Weight Watchers' App. I have been a member of Weight Watchers since 2003, when I lost 28lb for my wedding and kept most of it off for two years. My weight ballooned upwards when my thyroid started acting up and I feel like I've been fighting a losing battle ever since. Some of the problems were always having to lug the books around or needing to go on-line to point up foods and recipes or the constant necessity to update the restaurant and shopping guides. Oh, and Weight Watchers have changed the entire basis of their programs three times since I first bought one of their recipe books back in the 1980's.

As far as I'm concerned, all of those problems have been solved by their iPhone App, which not only replaces all the books but allows you to track your points and your weight both on your phone and on-line. Unlike the Android App, it fully replicates the functionality of the Weight Watchers website. (The Android App is only a points calculator.) Even better, the App syncs with it, so I can point up recipes on the website then find them on my phone to add to my tracker later on (e.g. when I grab a container of mystery lunch from the freezer, defrost it at work and then discover it was beef chilli instead of the curry I was expecting).   Also, I can point up items while I'm walking around the supermarket, which makes it less of a guessing game and easier to choose a sandwich, if I need to buy one.

Why not just rely on their website? Well, I've been a subscriber for eight years, but this makes it so much easier. I don't have the hassle of switching on my home PC or logging in. It's all there on my phone and I can sync whenever I have WiFi access or via 3G. I didn't need to go to a meeting to pick up the new books or update the restaurant guide, either.

I've been using the Weight Watchers App for two weeks now and lost 5lb in the process.   I haven't eaten typical diet food either during that time, just a normal diet (including burgers, pavlova and wine at an Anzac Day BBQ). This is great tool and I can thoroughly recommend it.

- Pam

Royal Wedding

2011-04-30T09:28:00.000Z

Did you watch it? What did you think of the dress, etc? And what about the guests' dresses?

DH and I watched it from the comfort of our sofa. I didn't really consider trekking into London to try a be there in person - after all, if you didn't have an invitation, how much would you really see? There'd be crowds and crushes and queuing and standing for hours (and England's unpredictable but usually cold weather), and that just isn't me. So I watched it all on the BBC.

Most of the dresses were beautiful. Kate looked stunning and her gown was an absolute classic with it's sweetheart neckline and lace over-top. Her sister's dress was also beautiful - I loved the line and the fit - 1930's curvy.

On a negative note, Beatrice and Eugene need someone to take them in hand and dress them. They're in their early '20's and yet they looked like mutton dressed up as lamb. One (the redhead) wore an OK outfit but the colour completely wiped out her complexion; the other wore a good colour, but the cut just made her look dumpy and fat. Both of them need to be given make-up lessons, since their eye make-up just looked tarty.

Personally, I thought it was a lovely wedding. With the exception of the crowds outside and the world's media watching, it could have been anyone-else's wedding, albeit one where a lot of money was spent. William and Kate are such nice, normal people. Outside their Royal duties and visits to his family, they live a normal life - grocery shopping, cooking each other meals, making tea for their friends/colleagues. They've both held down jobs and earned their own income. I just hope the press will give them the benefit of a private life and leave them alone when they're not "on duty".

They are very much in love and obviously very good friends. I wish them a long and happy life together. If they're as happy as DH and I, they will be very lucky indeed.

- Pam

Sheer frustration

2011-04-27T18:41:00.000Z

I have been trying since yesterday to buy my sister's birthday present. So far, neither major Australian department store website is willing to play ball. One keeps crashing on checkout. The other, won't let me even get that far.

Her birthday is Friday. And it's a big one. I want to get her something she'd really like instead of another bunch of flowers.

- Pam

Dear Sirdar / Sublime

2011-04-16T14:18:00.000Z

Dear Sirdar

Please reconsider the decision to discontinue Sublime Organic Merino DK. It is a luscious yarn to knit with, buttery soft to the touch and warm and cuddly too. I was lucky enough to purchase some from Black Sheep Yarns and I'm currently knitting your Willow jumper out of it. My only regret is that I didn't purchase more for my stash.

This is a lovely woollen yarn, why did you stop making it? Please reconsider.

Kind regards

Pam (emailed today)

Daydreams

2011-04-14T21:31:00.001Z

Today had one of those frustrating afternoons. I had a report to produce that I'd forgotten how to do, followed by the finance system going on a go slow. By 6pm, it had ground to a complete holt, twice, but I had an invoice to get out, so had to persist. Lots of time spent waiting for the system to respond to even the simplest commands. With my computer seizing up, I daydreamed, wistfully deciding what I'd do if I won certain amounts of money in the lottery.

£100,000? I'd clear our debts (say, £10,000), buy a new car (another £10,000), finish the house (£20,000), get the garden sorted out professionally (£2,000), fully fund an emergency fund (say £20,000), spend £10,000 on IVF, throw away a bit on gifts, travel and toys (say £8,000), and invest the leftovers in shares (£20,000).

With £500,000, I'd do all of the above, pay off the mortgage (£200,000) and split the remaining £200,000 into deposits for between 3 and 6 flats to have as rental properties. (Each property would cost between £120,000 and £200,0000, with the balance coming from a mortgage.) £500,000 would produce enough income that only one of us needs to work, so DH could retrain to become whatever he wanted. And, having paid off the mortgage, we could invest each month's "mortgage money" in shares.

A win of £1 million, would mean we'd both be able to retire. I'd do the above, and then spend another £300,000 on rental flats - maybe buying a couple outright for the income, as well as using some of the money to fund deposits for others. The remaining £200,000 would go on shares.

If it was a £10 million win, we'd be able to do all of the above and give some sizeable cash gifts to family. With £10 million, none of the properties would need mortgages, so would give us a sizeable income every month, to live off and reinvest.

I didn't get any further - a colleague interrupted my reverie and I didn't feel like sharing my thoughts with him. Instead, I had to turn my mind back to work.

- Pam (if it was you, what would you do?)

Scrummy with a touch of spinach

2011-04-13T21:15:00.000Z

Several months ago while surfing the "condemned food counter" at Tesco, I scored the final four inches of a chorizo sausage discarded from the deli. like many such prizes, it went into the freezer until I decided what to do with it. I was really tempted to try Kale and Chickpea Stew a la Crazy Aunt Purl but DH doesn't like cooked kale or many of its relatives (cabbage, etc). He'll eat them raw, but not cooked.

Saturday, when we were grocery shopping, I hit on making it with spinach. Thanks to an offer, I could pick up a large bunch of spinach for 60p. DH will eat spinach raw in salads and cooked in Sophie Dahl's Dhal so I rationalised that maybe, just maybe, he'd eat it in this. The original recipe is here. This is my version.

Chickpea and Chorizo Stew

Serves 4 to 6

Ingredients

1 medium onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, crushed
2 red jalapeno chillies sliced
100g/4oz chorizo, diced
450g cooked chickpeas (drained weight)
1 large bunch of spinach roughly chopped
1 bay leaf
500ml chicken stock
500g potatoes, peeled and cut into 1 inch dice (preferably use a boiling potato)
2 tablespoons olive oil

Method

Heat the oil in a large saucepan/stew pot. Fry the onion and chorizo together until the fat starts running from the chorizo (it will be red-ish).
Add the garlic and chillies. Fry for two or three more minutes.
Add the stock, chickpeas, potato, spinach and bay leaf. Bring to the boil and simmer for at least 20 minutes or until the the potato is cooked and at least half of the liquid has evaporated. The dish should look stew-like not soupy.
Season with salt and pepper.
Serve in deep soup plates.

This goes well over couscous or with good bread for dunking. It is even better when left to be eaten on the second day.

And the verdict? DH declared it "Scrummy", went back for seconds, and then demanded that I make it again soon. Even the dreaded spinach got the thumbs up.

- Pam

We Did it!

2011-04-04T22:12:00.000Z

To everyone who has already sponsored me for last Sunday's Lincoln10k: a BIG THANK YOU. If you haven't and you want to, there is still time. Just click here.

In the meantime, I promised you photos. The Mrs Slocombe Academy for Young Ladies turned out in force. Naturally, we hurt the eyes of everyone who looked at us.

(From left to right, Fifi, Dorothy, Sheila, Scarlet and Hester. Chris W is missing because he is a serious runner and was busy "getting in the zone".)

There was a small panic on Friday, when I realised I couldn't find my race number. I phoned the council and they sorted me out with a backup one, which I collected during the morning before the race. Dorothy sorted us out with pink gym-bloomers - Mrs S would be proud.

Once the signal blew, it took us about 10 minutes to cross the starting line. All the walkers were in the slowest group, at the back.

Our official times haven't been posted yet, but we know we completed the race in less than 1 hour 46 minutes, because that was the time on the race clock when we crossed the finishing line. Here is the whole team:

And heading back to our hotel:

I must say, the staff in the hotel didn't bat an eyelash when we staggered into the bar dressed like that and ordered a victory round. At that point, I had a Gin and Tonic in my sights and wasn't stopping for anyone.

We had a great time. Thank you Lincoln, and thank you to everyone who has sponsored us.

- Pam

Shameless Plug

2011-03-25T06:27:00.005Z

Please sponsor me to do the Lincoln 10K next weekend, Sunday 3rd April 2011. I'll be raising money for the Shooting Star Children's hospice.

When one of my oldest friends said he wanted to do some fundraising to mark his 25th year in London, I said "Sure, why not?". When he asked for suggestions, I came up with his home-town's 10K race and then uttered the fatal words: "Do it in drag. If you like, I'll even walk it with you". (He's not a runner.) Thus was born The Mrs Slocombe Academy for Young Ladies: Scarlet (Howard), Dorothy (David), Sheila (Chris F) and Fifi (me) their French maid. We won't be fast. We will be funny. And we will surely burn the retinas from your eyes:

Here's Dorothy and Scarlet posing for the camera. Aren't they fine strapping young gels, as our headmistress Mrs Slocombe would say?

- Pam (I must be mad. But please sponsor us.)

Thanks George

2011-03-24T19:11:00.001Z

Yesterday was Budget Day for the UK. At 12.30pm, George Osborne stood up in the House of Commons and delivered his budget speech. All the tax changes and personal allowance rises, etc, that have been hinted at by the press became real (by "hinted" I mean embargoed until 12.30 but they couldn't keep their mouths shut). In the UK, the new tax year starts on 6th April so the effects won't be long in coming. On a personal tax front, this is what will affect me directly:-

Fuel duty went down by a penny.
Employees' National Insurance went up - that's the "con" tax which pretends it's our social security tax but actually just goes into the general tax pool. The chancellor announced he is going to consult on merging NI with income tax. About bloody time too.
The tax free personal allowances goes up by £1,000 from 6th April BUT the band where you start to pay higher rate (40%) tax drops by £2,400, so anyone earning over £42,475 is immediately worse off.

I feel most aggrieved about the drop in the banding for higher rate tax. When you think about it in context, £42.5k isn't that high a salary: the average salary in London is £31k; the average house price in the UK is £180k; the average council tax on that house is £1.5k; the average car costs more than £10k; and an outer London zone 5 annual travelcard is £1,880. This isn't the first time games have been played with the 40% tax band - when I started working in tax, the higher rate kicked in at about £37k; 20 years later, while average salaries have more than doubled, it has barely moved. If it had risen at the same rate as inflation (which is what the bands were meant to do), then it would be over £50k.

As for me, I expect to be £20/month or £230.93 per annum worse off. That's what the BBC's budget calculator tells me http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12773565.

- Pam (more belt tightening)

Stitch & Craft Show, Olympia

2011-03-17T19:18:00.003Z

Errr.... How do I put this? "Forgive me Father for I have sinned...?" No, I'm not Catholic. How about "I've solved the dilemma about whether to buy a 16GB or a 32GB iPhone4. It'll have to be the 16GB one because I've spent the rest of my money on yarn"?

Yes, I think that works.

Today, I took the day off work to go to the Stitch & Craft Show at Olympia, the little sister to the big Knit & Stitch Show held at Alexandra Palace every October. This is the second or third time I've been to this particular show and I may not have gone if it wasn't that one of the magazines I subscribe to offered discounted tickets at £5.

I told myself: it'll be a cheap day out. I can take my lunch and some coffee and save my money for yarn.

I told myself: no stash enhancement unless I find something amazing or an amazing bargain (and, preferably, aran/worsted weight).

I told myself: I don't need any more yarn. I'd just buy some tools, maybe some KnitPro/KnitPicks crochet hooks.

I told myself: I'll set the budget at £30 and stick to that.

I lied.

I'd barely walked in the door when I encountered the Black Sheep Yarns booth. (They were directly in front of the door.) I've mentioned them before. Every show, they bring along thousands of skeins of yarn, which they sell by the bag at half-price or less. The owners dump all the sealed bags into a big heap and the knitters just dive in. It resembles a rugby scrum. Would you believe me if I said I was sucked into the vortex and barely made it out of there alive, clinging to bags of yarn to escape?

No. I didn't think you would.

My haul from Black Sheep includes:

30 skeins of Sublime Cashmere Merino Silk Aran, in the coast colourway (light blue). Sufficient yarn to make a sweater for DH. (I've probably bought far too much but that was the quantity recommended by Carole from Black Sheep for a man his size.) I was thinking of making the Inishturk Sweater from Lionbrand for him. If he doesn't like the yarn, I'll make it for me. Total price: £68.97.
20 skeins of an unknown brand pure-wool 4-ply, in a really pretty baby-pink. Given their size, I assumed the skeins were 25 grams each - I've just weighed a bag and I was right. Knitting destination - something vintage. Total price: £19.98.

At this point, I escaped Black Sheep and wandered around the show. However, I had to pass them as I was leaving and the only way to get out of the vortex was to buy:-

10 skeins of Sublime Soya Cotton DK in shade 085, Noodle, bought to make the pattern, Souk, from the book shown, The Luxuriously Exotic Soya Cotton Hand Knit Book also by Sublime. Cost including the book: £23.98.

(I really like the cover pattern, Passionflower, and the colour it's in (shade 088, pomegranate) which is why I returned to the yarn heap. However, they didn't have any pomegranate and it does occur to me that it would work well in the Sublime Angora Merino in Giggle Pink, that I already have stashed.)

The other place I dropped money on yarn was the Lang booth, home of Addi Turbo knitting needles, and Jawoll sock yarn.

The Jawoll Magic is for a pair of socks for DH; the other two are self-patterning and we may fight for them. Total cost: £19.

So much for self control. [sigh]

I did buy some tools: stitch holders and the like, spending £9.45 in the process, but not the KnitPro hooks - the available sets didn't appeal to me.

Anyway, I've just added up the cost of today's haul and I'm not proud of myself: £141.38.

Yes, I have the money in the bank to cover it. Yes, I won't get into debt over it. Yes, I will use it all... Eventually. But I'm not pleased with myself for walking in the door at the show and diving straight into the Black Sheep yarn pile, going "Aran! Aran! Must have Aran! What can I make with it now I've found it?". (The light blue wasn't even a colour on my list - it was the only shade they had that appealed to me that both DH and I can wear.)

[sigh]

This was meant to be the year when the stash decreased NOT increased. If I knit for an hour a day, every day, until Christmas, do you think it'll make a difference? (Like I don't do that already? [sigh])

- Pam

PS: The show wasn't just about yarn. One of the stands was manned by Corum, the charity that was originally the Foundling Hospital. They were displaying some of the thousands of foundling tokens left with the children by their mothers (in an age of illiteracy and before fingerprints, the tokens were a means of identifying a child should the mother come back to claim them later). Most of the tokens are cloth, sometimes embroidered, sometimes just a piece of ribbon onto which was written a name. (Many mothers tried to name their babies even though they knew they'd be renamed once they were admitted.) The token was attached to the child's record of admittance. They form a valuable textile archive, which is why they are being displayed a this show. Someone commented to me that they found it fascinating. "It's heartbreaking," I replied and started to cry.

A Diagnosis (and a car review)

2011-03-08T22:32:00.001Z

The garage finally called me today. The Toy didn't have a broken clutch or a damaged gearbox; it was a broken drive shaft. Cost to repair £400. He'll be ready tomorrow. I'll collect him on Saturday, which is the first chance I'll get.

In the meantime, I've driven to Site in a hire car, a Honda Civic. So far, I've done over 260 miles in it. On the one hand, it's not a model I've driven before, so I'm quite happy to give it a test drive; on the other, the designer seems to have swallowed some of the same rubbish that Renault feed their designers: all style and no function. Take a look at the rear end; can you see what I mean? (Pictures courtesy of Honda.)

See that spoiler, half way across the rear window? Not only does it put a thick band of (?) metal across the window cutting the view in two, it almost obscures the headlights of any vehicle behind you until, that is, said vehicle hits a bump in the road which creates the optical illusion that it is flashing you. Add to that the fact that the car doesn't have a rear wiper or washer, throw in a total inability to demist the lower half of the window (the top window has an electric demister) and the whole design of the hatch seams totally stupid.

(Interior shot of a left hand drive, automatic Civic.)

Another gripe (I have three, in total), is to do with the central console between the two front seats. Like most cars in Britain, this one has a manual gear box. The position of the gear lever is, probably, fine in an automatic (see above), but it is awkward for a manual driver. In addition, having the only cup holder directly in front of the gear lever is insane because you have to reach over your travel mug, holding your elbow at right angles, to avoid knocking the cup over (see below).

My final gripe is minor. I'm having problems coming to grips with the high beam on the headlights. It seams that on virtually every other car I have ever driven, you pull the indicator lever towards you to put on high beam and push it away from you if you just want to flash your headlights. In this car, it's the opposite.   (In some older cars, you pushed a button on the floor with your toe.)

OK, so those are all the bad things. On the plus side, it handles well and is fairly nippy. On the motorway, it was a comfortable drive so long as I didn't have to change gear. It was easy to set up the mirrors, seat, etc, to suit me. It has good wing mirrors which made reverse parking at work easy. The interior is versatile, with the rear seats folding up as well as folding down flat to create a large rear space for transporting goods. The driver's seat can be raised or lowered using a pump-action lever at the side and it's something you can do while you are driving, when you discover you can't see the speedo because the steering wheel is in the way. The instrument display is clear and sensibly laid out. Visibility is good to the front and sides of the vehicle. It doesn't have a electronic demister for the front window but that window defrosted fairly quickly this morning in -2C.

Over all, I can't give it a higher score than 6 out of 10.   If it was an automatic, I'd give it a 7.

- Pam

(edited later to add: that rear window thing is REALLY ANNOYING!!! You can't see a damn thing out of it if it's raining and, of course, you can't clear off the rain drops because THERE IS NO WIPER!!!  After driving in the rain this morning, the score just dropped to 5.)

Not a good evening

2011-03-05T16:57:00.000Z

Ever heard a tale about how bad things come in threes? Well this is one of those.

The only thing I had on my mind, when I left work on Thursday, was whether I should buy a 16GB iPhone4 or hold out for another month so that I could afford to buy the 32GB version. My inner geek says "get the one with bigger storage", but I am about £40 short. I drove home scheming: the arguments in my head running along the lines of "if I take £40 from this account, I could get the phone now and pay it back next month" or "why don't I just charge it and finish paying it off next month?". (I quickly shushed the latter argument.) Another part of my brain was arguing: "Why not settle for the 16GB? Do I really need 32GB of storage?". It lost.

Holding of purchasing for another month was still winning later on my way to a pub quiz, when I turned the car around outside the pub. Then I heard it. A metallic crunching noise, followed by "clatter, clatter". I quickly parked the car up. I first thought I'd damaged the steering (I'd had it on full lock); no, that felt fine. Wheels, then? They were still turning. I decided it had to be a wheel bearing. First thing wrong.

I went to the quiz, knowing that I could drive home with a broken wheel bearing, even if it wasn't safe to drive on the motorway to work. We won. And promptly donated our winnings to charity. (You have to if you're known to be a friend of the quiz master.)

Afterwards, S offered to shadow my drive home, in case something happened on the way. Turned out, he didn't need to. The Toy rolled about 2 feet before something seized up and he stopped. So I phoned the RAC, switched off the engine, switched on the hazard lights and settled down to a long-ish wait. When he arrived, the RAC mechanic determined it wasn't a wheel bearing. It was the clutch. The self-same clutch I'd had replaced 6 weeks ago.

(Incidentally, the most bizarre thing happened while I was waiting. A car pulled up beside me to ask directions. Given that the only way to identify that my car was possibly occupied were its flashing hazards, I was a bit surprised to say the least. Still don't know why they didn't walk into the pub and ask them. It was fully lit.)

Watching as the mechanic hitched the Toy up to tow home, I noticed a long scratch on the passenger side. Some bastard had keyed the Toy while I was in the pub. Second thing wrong.

Got home well after midnight. DH greeted me with a hot drink. Then noticed a puddle of water on the oak floor in the hall. Underneath the radiator. A radiator that had suspicious looking rust marks down one edge. It was obviously leaking from a seal near the valve you'd use to bleed it of air. We could see the water drops forming. I switched the radiator's thermostat to "off" and positioned a tupperware container under the drips. Third thing wrong.

Definitely not a good evening.

In the morning, the RAC towed me to the garage, while DH followed and then drove me into work. All I know is that the Toy will take several days to fix, so I've arranged a hire car for my trip to Site next week. And we'll get the plumber in to fix the radiator next week. It's still dripping a little, but not enough to get close to filling the Tupperware box.

- Pam

Frugal Friday (on Saturday): Think when you spend the money

2011-02-26T09:54:00.003Z

Have you been following the news about the Christchurch Earthquake in New Zealand? Have you donated? The Red Cross are running various donation sites - I used the British one to ensure they could claim tax relief on my donation and thus increase its value by 20%.

I was thinking about the earthquake on my drive home from Site yesterday, wondering what I could do from 15,000 miles away. Australians tend to think of New Zealand as our little brother; they were part of the federation talks in the 1890's until New South Wales pissed them off. You didn't need a passport to travel between the two countries until the 1970's, when the Australian government imposed that requirement. And about a third of all Kiwis live in Australia.

Anyway, I was wondering what I could do. As a knitter, my first instinct said "Knit something to donate", but I'm so far away that donating knitted goods is impractical. So I settled on donating cash.

Then I saw this, on the back of a toilet door in the motorway services at South Mimms:

And it made my blood boil. So much so, that I took a photo.

I have nothing against Red Nose Day, the biennial fundraising event run by Comic Relief. I'm sure they're grateful for the free publicity. However, what made me angry is the implication that they'll get the £1.50 or £4 if I buy those products from the services shop. They'll be lucky if they get 10 or 20 pence. How many people fall for this? Sure, if you were going to buy an overly expensive box of Maltesers from the shop anyway, then buying the packet that ensures a donation to charity might be a nice gesture. But were you going to buy two before you saw the promotion? And at a price where you could get four or five packets from the supermarket?

Surely it's better to donate money directly to the charity involved and cut out the middle man? In the case of the Maltesers, if I really wanted a snack, I could have bought something healthy from the Waitrose next door and donated my change to Red Nose Day and still given more than they'd receive from the promotion.

This happens at Christmas, too, with all of those "charity Christmas cards", when the charity named is lucky to get a couple of pennies from an expensive packet of cards.

We all have limited funds. If you want to donate money to charity, give it to them directly. That way, they'll get the most benefit.

- Pam

Frugal Friday : How I Saved The Week

2011-02-18T23:25:00.000Z

I had a "well D'uh!" moment this afternoon. After I collected my new glasses (see below), I popped into the bank to deposit a cheque and ended up having a chat with one of their advisors. In the middle of her trying to sell me one of their "new, improved" cheque accounts complete with shiny fees, we both had an epiphany.

Her rationale for "upgrading" my account to a shiny new one was that it because it has a much lower rate of overdraft interest, even with the fees it'd be cheaper. They're currently charging nearly 20% p.a. on overdrafts for accounts like mine. Plus they've imposed a monthly fixed fee of £5 for each month in which the account goes into overdraft. And even with last year's good effort, I'm still overdrawn for much of the month. If I didn't want to do that, she suggested, what about taking on a bank loan and transferring my overdraft to that? Or utilise a 0% credit card offer? "I've got a 0% credit card offer. I used it to pay for the freehold to my flat," says I.

"And why haven't you transfered your overdraft to that?" she demanded.

At which point, I stared at her. And the penny dropped.

Hard.

I could do that. And I could continue paying down that debt and pay it off faster because I wouldn't be clobbered by interest and charges each month. The effective interest rate is about 4% p.a. instead of 20% p.a., so why haven't I done it before? (4% because that's the rate of the balance transfer fee. I'm simplifying, of course.) The 0% rate runs out in November - that should be enough time to clear the overdraft, while continuing to pay down the balance already on there for the freehold.

There are risks. The biggest being that I could drift back into overdraft, ending up worse off than where I started: heavily overdrawn but this time carrying a similar balance on a credit card. Can I trust myself not to do that? A year ago, I don't know, but now I think so. I've paid a lot of debt off in the last year. I track my spending. I've put money into savings. I've recovered from the drain on my finances of having an empty flat (better, the tenant has just signed a new 12-month lease with a rent increase of £25/month). And my salary's gone up (I've had two raises).

When I got home, I logged into the credit card website and made the transfer. It does make sense.

- Pam

PS: About the title, one of the podcasts I listen to is the Knitcents podcast. Roue, the host, does a segment called "How I Saved The Week" where she lists her latest efforts to save money. I've stolen it from her.

Got my voice back

2011-02-18T22:32:00.001Z

Hello, did you miss me? It feels like forever since I last wrote. Where do I start? I've written a thousand blogs in my head but now they've all vanished. (Typical.)

OK, let's start with the computer. I took it to a local tech place, where they found a damaged sector and nothing else. There were no viruses, no bugs, no identifiable cause for Windows going SNAFU. I got it back last weekend - they did a complete rebuild and reinstalled Vista together with all the drivers. £69 very well spent. There is only one remaining problem: my bluetooth mouse won't work. I haven't tested yet whether the problem is the mouse or the computer. If the latter, then it's a physical problem and not the driver - I've managed to test the driver. Any suggestions?

In other news, I have new glasses - my first pair of verifocals*. Collected them this afternoon. They look pretty similar to my existing glasses, so no great change there. First impressions of verifocals: the reading "corner" by the nose is fine, easy to adjust to; it's the change of focus out by the arms that is weird. I wasn't expecting that. It's like looking into a mirror in a hall-of-mirrors and using the reflection to see with. It only happens if I turn my eyes instead of my head to look at something at a range of 3 feet or so away. Monday night's rehearsal is going to be a big test - can I read my music and watch the conductor without feeling sea-sick?

- Pam

* This feels like a further step in the transformation into my mother. Not only do I look like her and suffer her infertility problems, I've developed her eyes too. Short sight and long sight in the same eyeball. < sigh >

Ramblings

2011-02-04T21:14:00.000Z

DH is at work so I've ~~nicked~~ borrowed his computer to do a quick update. I've been at Site most of the week, got home an hour ago and will be back there on Tuesday. (Sunday night = Superbowl night. With the match finishing around 3.30am, I've taken Monday off.) The laptop situation is really, really annoying me. I'm not on it all night, everynight when I'm away, but I resent having that choice taken away from me. And I miss the ability to ~~witter away~~ write down my thoughts as I want, when I want.

I had plans for this year. It's amazing how those plans are dependent on having a computer. I wanted to work out to an exercise DVD in the mornings when I'm at Site. My choir will be singing in Nancy, France, in June and I wanted to learn some French beyond Ici est le facture pour le BlahBlah project (after four years dealing with the staff of a French client, my grasp of their language is still embarrassingly bad). I wanted to blog more often. I wanted to practice my singing using the rehearsal midi-files my choir provides.

Had a conversation yesterday with one of our tech guys at work. My original plan was to drop the laptop off at the clinic at PC World but he suggested finding a local place instead, saying PC World's customer service had a bad reputation. There's a place in Uxbridge I may try. It needs Vista reinstalled and, probably, all the drivers. Fingers crossed, I can drop it off tomorrow and get it back, fixed, on Monday afternoon.

On the way home tonight, I dropped into Costco and was very tempted by one of the netbooks. I didn't buy it but it remains an option. I could spend the Sanity Fund (currently £375 and all earmarked for an iPhone). We'll see what tomorrow brings, I guess.

- Pam (feeling like a moaning minny)

Apologies for the radio silence but...

2011-02-01T18:17:00.000Z

Meine Laptop ist kaput. Or at least, very, very sick. Sunday, it struggled to get to the log-in screen and had to "repair" itself. When it does load, there are so many "Driver xxx has stopped working" messages that it takes 15 minutes to get the desktop up and running.

I don't even know what half of those things do. Why should software that comes preloaded fail? It's only two years old, for heaven's sake - why should it be having these problems?

I'm taking it to the clinic at PC World on Saturday and they can rebuild it. In the meantime, I probably won't be blogging much.

- Pam (suspect the cure will be "Windows 7" and an expensive bill)

Involuntary Silence

2011-01-19T07:06:00.000Z

At one point this month, it seemed that everything I touched broke. The Toy kept revving strangely every time I changed gear. My mobile phone had a temper tantrum. The files I needed to use at work? Crashed.
And the laptop, my computer, refused to load my profile. Instead, I kept getting this weird message, "The User Profile profile service failed to logon" and then it would return to the log-in screen. This happened the day we were going away for New Year.

It took some frantic internet searching to find out what had gone wrong: Vista has a bug where it renames your profile as a backup and then tries to create a new copy. Except that the new copy has nothing in it to load. There is a solution: you have to change it all back. If it happens to you, here is the discussion board that helped me - you need to read the entire thread though. And it does work.

I've spent the last week cleaning up the laptop: deleting old podcasts, running a backup, creating a restore point, running a registry cleaner. Things aren't perfect when I login the laptop takes ages to load and I get dozens of "xxxx Service Failed. Windows is checking for a fix" messages. Even the service that checks for fixes failed! I'm at a bit of a loss about what to do next.

Anyway, while it wasn't working, I started to compose a New Year post. It seems a bit to late now to give it a post on its own so here it is:

Getting my head around 2011

Happy New Year! Did you do anything special to celebrate? We went to friends. How was your Christmas? Have you made any resolutions? How did last year's go? I promise to have a Sit-Rep up on last year by the end of Sunday.

Over the last two weeks, I've eaten too much, drunk too much, cooked, knitted, watched 50+ episodes of CSI, broke the laptop, visited the Imperial War Museum, gone to the football, attended 3 Christmas meals, attempted to fix the laptop, played with the Best Dog In the World, gave blood, shopped a little, caught up with friends, de-stressed, snuggled with DH, etc, etc. I am so glad I booked the week off before Christmas and that my employer closes between Christmas and New Year. I was knackered and tired and (probably) had another dose of shingles.

The period between Christmas and New Year has always been a special time for me; a time for reflection and day-dreams and making plans for the future. This year it seems like everyone is getting on that band-wagon: everywhere I look, I'm getting the same message "New Year; New You". (It even appeared in the subject line of emails from two yarn stores. What on earth is that about?) So far, I only have one New Year's Resolution: to get fit.

It's incomplete, but I hope you get the idea.

Oh, and the problem with the Toy? Needed a new clutch.

- Pam

Christmas

2010-12-25T09:11:00.057Z

I didn't mean to be silent for so long. The job is hell as usual. Nothing personal, just too much work and not enough me. As well as the usual shutdown between Christmas and New Year, I took the week off before Christmas and have spent the time winding down.

Saturday morning, I sat drinking coffee, watching the snow fall and listening to the cricket live from the WACA in Perth, Western Australia: England versus Australia. In my head, I could see a hot summer's day bathed in that glorious golden Australian light. What a contrast. Britain has been caught out again by winter. You'd think they'd learn. It snowed for three hours causing chaos as usual: the second runway at Heathrow was closed for days; Eurostar trains were cancelled; roads closed. We've had snow on the ground ever since, with the odd flurry to top it up.

We did "Polish" Christmas last night: roast goose with chestnut stuffing, roast potatoes, roast onion, honey glazed parsnips, broccoli, and orange sauce; then the presents and then Christmas Pudding. It was just the two of us this year and that was perfect. Guess what DH gave me for Christmas? The complete series of The Good Life . I didn't even know it had been re-released! I feel thoroughly spoilt.

The goose was an interesting cooking challenge since it was too long for the baking dish, even diagonally.

It ended up getting roasted with its feet in the air, wrapped in foil and propped up on the side of the oven. (Note to self: next time 30 minutes a kilo at 170C, draining of fat every half hour.) Although DH had picked up a turkey on a visit to the butcher earlier in the month, I really wanted a goose*. The butcher said he could get one but it'd "cost an arm and a leg". We collected him on Tuesday and I hate to break it to our kosher butcher, but at £46, his goose was cheaper than the non-kosher one I bought two years ago for Christmas at Peter's (£70-odd, IIRC). The turkey is in the freezer for later in the year.

Today, we're off to friends to have another Christmas. I'll leave you with one other lasting memory: my husband insisting he wasn't cold, clearing snow from the cloches in the veggie patch.

Eat your heart out, Crocodile Dundee. You aren't as hard as DH. :o)

Merry Christmas everyone.

- Pam

* This is the first year since we moved into the house that the stove has been wired in and I could use its electric ovens. Except for last year when I did a duck in the microwave-convection oven, every other year I'd prep the turkey but it'd get roasted in my MIL's oven before being brought back here for dinner. I wanted to celebrate having a proper working stove by cooking something I haven't been able to cook, so enter the goose.

Football rant

2010-12-05T11:56:00.000Z

Could someone in the Chelsea hierachy please explain to me: what is the point of Salomon Kalou? You play him as a foward but, lets face it, he can't score goals. In four years, he's scored what? 34 goals? Even your prize defender, John Terry, has a better goal scoring record than that.

Kalou just isn't up to the job you're giving him. Do you know his nickname on the terraces? Forest. As in "Forest Gump". He'll run forever, but he can't tackle and he can't score. Why did you get rid of decent players, like Joe Cole and keep Kalou?

Sigh.

And you wonder why we're struggling.

- Pam

Frugal Friday on Saturday - introducing Herdy

2010-12-04T11:47:00.001Z

This is Herdy. Herdy, is a sheepy-bank.

Herdy was a Christmas present, last year or the year before.

Every evening, Herdy gets fed with 1p, 2p, 5p and £2 coins. DH and I have been collecting them since 1999. We have larger containers for them than Herdy but they were put into storage when we started the building work in March so Herdy came into play. Today, we emptied a very full Herdy.

It took quite a bit of shaking.

And the £2 coins kept getting in the way.

Eventually, Herdy was empty.

As you can see from the picture with DH's hand, Herdy is not huge. Even so, he contained:

£94 x £2 coins

£3.50 x 5p coins

£2.28 x 1p and 2p coins

A grand total of £99.78p, which has now been added to these:

When full, we'll bag them, tag them and take them to the bank. The coppers jar holds about £22 when full. The 5p jar has never been emptied, was last counted at 3/4 full and held around £90 then. (Oh, and it weighed in at 20lb today.) The Maltesers money box holds £600 and is known as the "running away fund" (it goes towards holidays).

Because we fill these in tiny increments, this is money we don't miss. We do have one rule we (almost always) apply - if you get one of these coins, don't spend it; take it home to feed Herdy. When we started the collection, I was inspired by a story told by the Australian finance guru, Noel Whittaker, about a client of his, a single mum living on benefits who saved enough for a deposit on a home for her family. She did it by applying one rule: never spend a $5 bill.* When the £2 coin came out, I decided to do the same with that. It's a good rule - we've saved well over £2,000 of holiday money that way.

- Pam

* When my sister was a mortgage broker, she had a client in almost identical circumstances who did something similar. In her client's case, she'd realised that every time she went shopping and decided to buy a "little treat" for herself, it cost about $5. One day, she had a lightbulb moment and realised that if she saved all those $5 treats, she could save enough for a down payment on a home. And so she did.

OK, phone, you win

2010-11-27T12:01:00.000Z

The phone charger broke this morning. Don't think you get away with it that easily though - I still have the in-car charger AND I ordered a replacement from Amazon.

Just because I'd like an iPhone doesn't mean I'm ready to give up on you just yet. If you're going to die on me, you'll have to suicide another way. After 8 years, I've reached the "engineering state" of wanting to find out how much longer you'll last. Thanks to Lance, owner of your cousin phone, I know your model has longevity and that there are plenty of spare parts available.

You aren't getting away with it that easily.

- Pam

An open letter

2010-11-24T22:06:00.000Z

To my mobile phone,

You gave me quite a scare last week, when you wouldn't charge. I know you and the phone charger have been together a long time and, no doubt, in such a long relationship, you've put up with quite a lot but did you have to chose Monday to have a spat? After more than eight years of happy cohabiting , you chose Monday to sulk and refuse to charge. Why? At first I thought it was me, talking about my lust for an iPhone which triggered your sulking (you know it's only window shopping and I wouldn't desert you, don't you?). Then I realised it was the phone charger. What did the phone charger do to upset you?

I'm glad to see that you kissed and make-up on Tuesday.

- Pam

To the woman who taught me horticulture in year 9

2010-11-06T11:47:00.000Z

I wish I could remember your name.

Our weekly 1 hour sessions seemed a bit like a waste of time - we suspected that we were really cheap labour for the school (remember all the times you had us digging in the kindergarten garden? I do. That soil was root-bound and rock yard). You really didn't inspire us to become gardeners. However, you did teach me some useful things: how to graft roses; how to grow plants from seed, prick them out and pot them on; how to prune.

Now, I wish you'd taught us more of the useful stuff and used us less as a workforce. Soil improvement would have been useful. Composting would have been useful. Pest control would have been useful. We learned none of those things.

Why didn't you teach us about growing vegetables and maintaining a vegetable plot?

- Pam (OK, I'll concede your attempts at getting us to dig did help this morning when I turned over the plot)

Sit Rep Sept/Oct 2010

2010-11-05T19:25:00.001Z

I didn't write a SitRep for September mainly because October slipped by so fast that it was the middle of the month before I knew it. August's report is here.

SOCKS My September socks were a pair of "use-em-ups" in some leftover self-patterning Harry Potter/Opal yarn. The colourway was Slitherin, chosen for the blues (I didn't notice the name until days later). As usual the feet were made in Lisa Souza's Sock! in Ecru.

For October's socks, I chose the Hibiscus for Hope pattern I received in 2008 after sponsoring the designer after the Yarn Harlot brought it to my attention (http://www.yarnharlot.ca/blog/archives/2008/08/08/regatta_day.html). I'm using the darker shade of green Jitterbug I purchased last year at the Knit & Stitch Show.

Unfortunately, I still haven't finished the first sock - I'm half way up the leg having re-done the heel twice (I don't like the way the short row heel looks - too many holes at the end of the rows - but, from the pictures in the above post, it looks as if the Yarn Harlot got the same results I did).

It's a lovely pattern, not difficult, but you do have to keep track of where you are. (Thank heaven for highlighter tape!) It would have been too difficult to follow at Sunday's NFL game (yes, I was at Wembley), so I started some top-down simple socks in a self-patterning yarn about 15 minutes before we left the house ...........

For the record, except for the opening 4 rows,this is how much you can knit during an NFL game and the pre-match entertainment (20 minutes). I've already started the heel flap.

STASH The second weekend in September was iKnit London Weekend, where I did two classes: Lopapeysa with Ragga from Knitting Iceland and Knitting Sideways with Woolly Wormhead (check out her amazing hats). Lopapeysa are the classic Icelandic sweaters, knitted in Lopi, with the plain body and decorative bands around the wrists, waist and neck. We played with Lopi and Lopi-Lite and I now I have a tiny sweater with which to decorate my Christmas tree. Luckily for the stash, Ragga didn't have any Lopi to sell at her booth or I would have been sorely tempted - it was lovely to handle AND I have the perfect pattern in mind to make with it. I did buy two more skeins of the Artesano Aran to ensure I now have a sweater's worth; it wasn't in either of the dye lots I already have so I will alternate it with the others. My remaining stash-cash went on several varieties of roving and a spindle since I've decided to learn to spin.

<--cough-->Artesano Aran <--cough-->

October brought the Knit & Stitch Show at Alexandra Palace, which totally blew away the stash diet. I claim that I was taken prisoner by those horrible, nasty people at Black Sheep Yarns and not allowed out until I purchased a sweater's worth of Sublime Organic Merino DK (13 balls) in grey and a pattern, Sublime's "Willow" sweater.

(I'm only kidding: Black Sheep are the UK's equivalent to Webs and very nice people. Every year, they bring container loads of close-outs with them, at massively discounted prices. Sometimes their stall resembles a rugby scrum as women dive bodily into the yarn pile in order to find the yarn they want/need.)

I also failed to resist the Colinette stall: no mill ends this year but they did have 150g skeins of Jitterbug for the price of the more usual 100g ones. Three skeins wormed their way into the stash. So did 3 balls of self-patterning sock yarn at other stalls, including the one I'm knitting above. (For the record, I purchased 4 but gave a ball of Opal - plus 2.5mm dpns and a pattern - to my friend's mum in an attempt to corrupt her into a sock knitter.) My final purchase was a skein of Madeleine Tosh cashmere - yum!

In other knitting news: I finished the Brown Cabled Cardigan last weekend, with only a couple of metres of the Heathland Hebridean to spare, so that's two more skeins finished. I've also finished the first skein of the Artesano Aran (I'm making Mr Greenjeans from Knitty) and half the second. Photos to follow when I've got someone to take me modelling the garments.

I have completely lost track of how many skeins that adds up to, but I must be nearing 30 for the year.

OVERDRAFT September was a bad month. The holiday, coupled with the typical "I'm on holiday... To hell with it!", meant that my overdraft repayment efforts went backwards by £86.25. However, I did well in October (£212.55) and made up that ground and then some for a net repayment over the two months of £126.30. That brings my total repayment for the year to £1,222.60.

GARDEN I harvested all the tomatoes in a mad attempt to get to them before they were overcome by blight. It only took a few minutes to realise that some were already overcome and were rotting inside their skins (the blight seems to liquefy them from the inside out). The ripe ones were made into two tubs of tomato sauce and then frozen. The green ones went into boxes with a couple of apples in an attempt to ripen them. Some did ripen and have been used, others developed a dry white mould and have been binned.

Bought garlic, shallots and broad beans to plant out this weekend.

- Pam (I think this post is long enough now)

Be careful what you wish for (or the reason I haven't been blogging)

2010-10-16T10:02:00.000Z

For at least a year, my Boss has been wondering what to do with me when my project finishes. Since we're over a year behind schedule, there have been numerous plans made and abandoned. However, the end is in sight (we are deep into commissioning and have officially handed over control of the plant to the owners). His more recent plan was to give me a financial reporting/internal audit role, expanding a reporting role that already exists into something more major. The current incumbent ("M") was a contractor who we'd keep until Christmas.

At the start of September, Boss calls me into a meeting room and says "Be careful what you wish for. M has resigned. Unless we can persuade him to stay a little long, he's leaving on Thursday". [Gulp!] My work on the project hadn't diminished but I could take over the basic weekly and monthly reports and, in the meantime, Boss would shoulder anything major. The budgets for next financial year had already been completed and the next big thing on the horizon wasn't until mid-November when, hopefully, the project would have wound down a bit.

Two weeks go by. I get a handover. Although the reports have to be run on a timetable, they won't severely impact the "day job". M extends his stay to cover for me when I'm in Normandy.

The Tuesday before I go on holiday, I go into the office and get as far as making my first coffee for the day when Boss calls me into another meeting room. "Sorry, but we have to switch to Plan B. "S" has resigned. I need you to take over Buildings Group!". Initially, that meant billing and financial maintenance of two large framework projects; eventually, it'll mean managing three staff and creating a management accounting role to support the operations director. Since S is staff, this time I'd have a month's handover. The original new job would be downgraded and parcelled out, probably to disappear.

I sat there for a minute doing some rapid thinking. If the truth be told, while the other job had a great job title (Finance and Reporting Manager) and would have been a good career move, I'd doubted its longevity. I'd given it a 50:50 chance of being axed in the next round of budget cuts. And I hadn't asked for more money because I knew there wouldn't be any.

"OK, the answer's "yes". Can I have a car allowance, please?"

So now I have two jobs - both of them full time - and 40 official hours a week in which to do them. And part of a third that won't disappear for at least a couple more weeks (or until Boss hires his new hybrid Project Accountant/Reporting Assistant). To say that I'm brain dead by 6pm each night is an understatement. I'm hoping that is just due to the stress of not being in charge of my own time for three weeks, while I was getting my second handover. We shall see.

Learning curves. I have them.

- Pam

Normandy

2010-09-22T22:30:00.000Z

I have spent much of the last few days close to tears. Nothing bad has happened to me - no family disasters or work related nightmares - and I am not depressed about anything. It's just that we took a long weekend and spent it in Normandy, in the middle of the American section of the D-Day Landings just outside St Mere Eglise. We were only a few miles from Utah Beach.

I suppose it is possible to avoid reminders of D-Day when one goes to Normandy, but we couldn't. St Mere Eglise was probably the first town captured by the Americans after the landings began, when paratroopers were dropped on the village and surrounding countryside. Their casualty rate was about 50%.

One lucky man (it does depend on how you look at it), John Steele, got caught on the church steeple during his landing and had to play dead while watching his unit being shot to pieces in the square below. Steele survived. Today, a permanent reminder hangs from the church tower.

And the museum is dedicated to the 82nd Airborne.

We hadn't planned the trip to be a tour around the memorials but how could we ignore them? The idea was to spend a long weekend staying with a friend in the farmhouse his parents partially own. Thursday morning, we caught the early ferry from Portsmouth to Cherbourg.

The only "site" on my list was Bayeux - I wanted to visit the Tapestry. Apart from that, I planned to sleep, laze around, visit a market or two and possibly cook a meal with the results. Oh, and find a yarn shop (I succeeded and failed at that - the only one I found was closed on Monday afternoon when we visited).

We made it to Bayeux on Friday, saw the Tapestry, and drove to Arromanches afterwards for a picnic lunch. I was sitting on the sea wall, looking out over the remains of the Mulberry Harbour when it hit me that this is where it all happened. Gold Beach. We were at the heart of D-Day and couldn't avoid it. For much of the battle in France, Arromanches was the Allies only real harbour, towed in pieces across the Channel hours after the landings began (40% of the components were lost at sea); its sister harbour at Omaha Beach destroyed by bad weather days after it was built.

(I wish I had DH's camera handy to raid. Among the pictures he took at Arromanches is a plaque commemorating the engineering companies involved in designing/building the harbour. I've worked for two of them. We used a couple more on my Project, including one of the fabrication companies.)

Once I started looking, I couldn't stop. We visited the museum at Arromanche and back in St Mere Eglise. I learned about the markers at the side of the road. There are two types: the D-Day Route markers which are numbered, start in St Mere Eglise and follow the route the troups took to liberate France.

Far sadder are the memorial markers which name a stretch of road after a soldier who died nearby. In some places, so many men died that they're lined up side by side.

I went round the museums with tears in my eyes but didn't truly break down until we went to Utah Beach. The beach was empty and windswept.

Behind the dunes on the left are the remains of a gun emplacement captured from the Germans. These days it is the hub of one of the memorials. Upstairs are flagpoles and monuments. Downstairs, is a corridor leading to a bunker. In the corridor a simple plaque said "in memory of our fallen comrades" and listed the names of the men from the unit who died during its capture. It had been placed there by the survivors; it was personal. That's when I lost it completely. I went outside and sobbed my heart out.

I cried for all the men who died before their time; for their family members whose hearts were broken as a result; and for the men who survived but were injured and had to suffer in agonised silence so as to not give their position away. Such a waste.

I'm crying now, as I type this. I can barely see the screen.

- Pam

Sock FO's

2010-09-05T09:16:00.000Z

I've been promising some of these for months.

DH's Weird Science Socks

These are from Yarn Forward, in a yarn called "Aurora" from Angel Yarns. When I bought it off their website, the yarn shown was in jewel shades; I was disappointed to find it was the above muted/muddy colours, but I left it too long to send it back. Anyway, DH said it would be OK for a pair of socks for him, so I made these. I still have to take a photo of the back pattern, which was not shown in the magazine and was not related to the pattern shown on the front of the legs.

Jacquard self-patterning socks

Yarn: Regia.
Colourway: Jacquard
Needles: 2.5mm DPNs

I enjoyed doing these so much that I promptly knitted a pair of use-em-up socks to finish off the yarn.

Jacquard Use-em-up Socks

They're a little shorter than my usual socks and, unlike other Ues-em-ups don't have the patterned heel - I'd finished the first one and got half way down the second leg when I realised that I didn't have enough patterned yarn do do the heel and the toe so had to rip back the first sock to make a semi matching pair.

I just love the toes.

In the end, I had a metre left of the Regia. The other yarn is Lisa Souza Sock! in Ecru.

Zig-Zag Socks

One pair for Eldest Sis for her birthday, last April:

Yarn: Cherry Tree Hill DK
Colourway: Cabin Fever
Needles: 3.25mm DPNs
Pattern: Zig-Zag Socks by Jocelyn Sertich

And one pair for me.

Yarn: Mirasole Chirapa
Colourway: Spearmint

Here is a close-up of the pattern, which is based on multiples of six stitches and is easy to remember.

As I mentioned in this month's SitRep, my pair knitted up shorter than the pair for my sister. Also, I don't know how her pair are wearing but I've worn mine twice and the soles are felting:

- Pam

Sit-Rep 2010 - August

2010-09-05T08:17:00.002Z

What happened to August??? I'd swear that the last time I turned around it was July. Anyway, here is my Sit-Rep for August:

STASH Maintained cold sheep. Even went into the lion's den today(the yarn department at John Lewis) and avoided buying anything. Do not expect September to be as good - I-Knit London is on at the end of next week and I'm bound to get ambushed. Have finished another skein of the Heathland Hebridean (am now half way up the first sleeve), as well as one and a half skeins of sock yarn (Mirasole's Chirapa in the spearmint colourway) so that's 2.5 skeins for a total of 18 skeins used up.

OVERDRAFT Another £126.12 paid back for a total of £1,096.30 paid back this year. That is far better than I feared it would be - I fell quite heavily off the wagon and didn't track my spending at all in August.

GARDEN Not a lot to report: the butternut pumpkin is taking over the world and has to be discouraged from climbing through the fence into the next door neighbour's back garden; one of the runner bean plants has finally flowered (very pretty flowers) but the others are still just sitting there doing nothing; and some of the onions are probably ready for harvesting. The courgettes died. We've had a few sprouts from one of the sprouting broccoli (the other will sprout in early spring). The tomatoes have run wild and needed staking (some are supported on bricks); there are dozens of green tomatoes appearing but it's been so wet recently that I'm beginning to worry about blight. I've reused one of the potato tyres to grow pak-choi; they're about an inch high at present. There are about a dozen chillies visible now, spread over three plants and, on Tuesday night, we cooked with and ate our very first jalapeno chilli. Yum!

I'm beginning to plan for next year's garden. I want to try over-wintering broad beans, which means planting them out in October. Ditto garlic and shallots. I'd also like to try growing beetroot, having finally overcome a beetroot-canned-in-vinegar-induced aversion to them. Not sure what else to grow.

And finally, we're part way through this year's attempt to make rosehip jelly, having harvested 5kg (11lb) of rosehips from the rose bush in the front garden.

SOCKS Completed another pair of the zig-zag socks, this time for me. The Mirasole yarn didn't knit to the same tension as the pair I made for my sister, which I found out the hard way (I grafted the toe shut on the first one, tried it on and discovered that they were far too short in the foot). Hands up any frequent sock knitter who does a gauge swatch on a pair of socks for themselves. <--stands on toes to look at the back of the room--> No, can't see anyone. <--shakes head--> Since the yarn can pass as DK, this pair were meant to be my catch-up pair, with another pair to follow. However, the subsequent pair were only 40 rows long at month end.

- Pam

I am a numpty

2010-08-24T22:27:00.000Z

I am a numpty - part 1

I'm at Site this week. Yesterday, during my drive up, I reached into my handbag to check my phone and realised, with a cold sick feeling, that I'd left it at home. Stopped at the Services, where I normally text/phone DH to tell him "I'm OK and have got this far"; tore my bag apart. No phone. Dashed to a phone booth to call home: yes, said DH, my phone was were I'd left it, dangling from the bedside table while it was recharging.

Damn. Damn. Damn! I need my phone when I'm travelling: it's my link with home; my alarm clock; and the main way people can contact me.

Solution: stopped at the supermarket and picked up the cheapest pay-as-you-go mobile phone I could find. £19 plus £10 for the top-up. I'd rather not have spent the money but it'll do for the week and will work as a backup phone/guest phone for overseas visitors. And the top up doesn't expire.

I am a numpty - part 2

As you know, I travel to Site a lot, every second week at the moment. That involves hotel bills, meal bills; mileage claims and buying my lunch, etc. I put the vast majority of my spending on a credit card, while I'm here, so that I don't have to fund my expenses (I claim them back from work and pay before the due date). I've been doing this journey at least once a month for the last three years. The Project has about three months left to run.

About two thirds of my regular grocery shopping is at Tesco, together with 99% of the fuel we purchase for the car. Tesco has a "Clubcard" which enables you to collect points that give you vouchers quarterly of £0.01 for every £1 you spend in store. They also have a Clubcard credit card that gives you points on all your spending over £4 plus double points when you shop "in store". I've had a Tesco credit card for over two years. Got it for a 0% balance transfer and never used it since.

It only occurred to me a week ago that maybe, just maybe, I should be using my Tesco credit card during my trips to Site because (well, d'uh!) I could be getting a free penny for every Pound I spend. Mental head slap time. At an average of £500 a trip, that's an free £5 each time I come to Site.

I AM A NUMPTY!!!

- Pam (better late than ever)

Sit-Rep 2010 - June & July

2010-08-15T11:18:00.000Z

Apologies for the lateness of this Sit-Rep update.   It's not my fault! In the last week of July, DH put a tank of diesel in the Toy for me and I've waited two weeks for him to tell me by how much I needed to reimburse him. (Proof that nagging doesn't work - I must have asked a dozen times.) Anyway, here is my update. My last update is here.

STASH Maintained cold sheep up until the day that I visited KnitNation on 31st July, when the lovely Sarah at Brownberry Yarns sold me 6 beautiful skeins of Artesano Alpaca Aran in a denim blue (photo to follow - I have a KnitNation Report to post). I bought their last six skeins in that colour, right out from under the nose of another knitter. At the time, I wanted 8 skeins because I'm a bit worried about the yardage (6 skeins = only 864 yards/790 metres), so I've ordered 2 more from Brownberry but couldn't get the same dye lot.

In other Stash/Kniting news, I've knitted another skein of Heathland Hebridean into the Brown Cable Cardigan (almost finished the second front). I didn't mention, last time that I started the second skein of the Wagtail Mohair half way up the back of the Mohair cardigan, which is now almost complete - I've got less than half of one front to go, plus the edging. Two skeins of Phildar Shoot went into a 5 Hour Baby Sweater for a colleague, which left me with 3/4 of a skein - that yarn was a charity shop find in 2009. The leftover Cherry Tree Hill yarn from my sister's Zig-Zag socks went into a pair of fingerless mittens using the same zig-zag pattern. And I've finished off another skein of sock yarn. So that's 5.5 skeins for a total of 15.5 skeins.   Doesn't seem like a lot, given the amount of knitting involved.

GARDEN Guess what my birthday present from was this year? A terracotta strawberry planter filled with compost and three strawberry plants! The plants are thriving and have given us a handful of strawberries (it is very late in the season). One of them has already put out a runner, so we anchored it in a spare hole in the planter and now I have four plants.

On to the rest of the garden. Didn't get a huge number of broad beans - while I was a dedicated squisher of blackfly, they won several battles. The butternut squash is taking over the world, as are the tomatoes. Most of the onions are doing well and the two broccolis which survived from last year have thrived (they were last year's failure-to-thrives that somehow survived being neglected in pots over the winter). Some of the peppers and chillies are doing well but a couple of the jalapenos are just sitting there 3 inches high and sulking - in their case, I'm wondering if they were getting waterlogged in their grow-bags. The rocket did well, then bolted and now is setting seed.    We've harvested two of the three potatoes and they were heavenly.

On the failure side: I planted out some pak-choi and it died in the sun. I doubt the garlic harvest will be that good but at least, now, I know what I've done wrong - garlic needs a freeze early on to prosper. The courgettes failed to thrive, as did the runner beans; the plants didn't die; they just didn't grow any bigger. I think watering may have been an issue, since June and July were both dry months and, although we watered every night, I don't think they got enough. About 3 weeks ago, I invested in a soaker hose, which seems to be helping.

As well as buying and planting out my garlic before Christmas next time, the other thing I need to do is to get some fresh seeds. The broad beans were grown from old seed, which may have been a factor in their not growing many beans.

FITNESS Weight Watchers? What's Weight Watchers?   Let's not go there, shall we? I'm still attending Pilates and Yoga classes, but I need to add some aerobic exercise pronto. At least I've located my new running shoes (bought at Christmas).

OVERDRAFT Paid back a combined total of £233.02 for June (£127.76) and July (£105.26) which gives a total pay back of £970.18 for the year. Although I'm glad to see the balance is decreasing, I know is has slowed down a lot. There are two main reasons for the slow down: I've set a couple of new savings goals (next year, I will pay cash for my Chelsea season ticket for the first time ever); and I've increased the amount of money that goes into our joint account, in order to cover more of the shortfall from DH's unemployment. I already know August will be a bad month for paying back the overdraft: KnitNation fell into August's spending (it was after payday) and I've already run through my entire "Money To Live Off" budget. The only hope for August is that I won't spend so much money on diesel for the car*, so the balance of the diesel accrual can be offset against the overrun.

SOCKS As suspected, I didn't knit a complete pair of socks in June; instead, I did the Zig-Zag Fingerless Mittens and about half of one sock. I finished those socks in July - they're my typical Use It Up Socks made from the leftovers of the self-patterning sock yarn and some Lisa Souza Sock! in ecru. Hopefully, I can catch up in August.

- Pam (photos to follow)

* For my trips to Site, I habitually offset one tank of fuel against the money from my mileage claim since I use approximately one tank extra that week. Since I'm going to site more often at the moment, it's possible I won't spend as much of my diesel accrual as I would in a more typical month.

Why?

2010-08-13T05:44:00.000Z

It all came out of Junior (my small suitcase), so why won't it all go back?

- Pam (at Site)

Something you don't see every day.

2010-08-05T19:39:00.000Z

I think they got their fuel prices confused at the Tesco petrol station in Scunthorpe, when I was there last week. Diesel is never cheaper than unleaded petrol.... until now, that is. Me thinks someone at Tesco made a mistake.

That's the 'per litre' price, so the diesel was about £4.40 per US gallon.

I double checked the prices shown on the bowser, before I filled up the Toy. Yes, the diesel was 4p cheaper per litre.

- Pam

Poppies

2010-07-25T22:14:00.000Z

One of my favourite sights of the English summer is when the poppies appear in the fields. If you have ever browsed a copy of the Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady or the spin-off craft and knitting books, you will be familiar with Edith Holden's water colours of English poppies.

Although I loved the pictures that appeared in the books, I must have been in England for 12 years before I saw the real thing in the flesh. They only appear in uncultivated fields or in the margins on the side of country roads and, until that summer, I'd pretty much always lived and worked in the city. Then, one June, I spotted something orange at the side of the road and realised it was a poppy!

A month ago, when I was driving home from Site, I was treated to the tripple bill of poppies on the side of the road and wild roses growing through hedges rich in elderflowers. Unfortunately, it was tipping it down with rain and I kept missing the best parking places from which to take photos. Eventually, I gave up.

Two weeks later, I was back at Site and, on the way home, I tried again. It was too late in the season for the roses and the elderflowers, but I managed to find some late poppies.

and

Aren't they pretty?

When I sort out our garden for good (as opposed to the annual temporary measures), poppies are one of the plants that are definitely going in.

- Pam

The Code

2010-07-24T19:45:00.001Z

There is a code amongst women. I don't know where or when we get inducted, but it seems to pass from one generation to another, almost telepathically. No one talks about it. Not every woman has it. Do men get inducted? I haven't a clue. It is: no idle hands (or "don't just sit there. Do something!"). It's there when I can't sit down until after the dishes are done and lunches prepared for tomorrow. It's there every time I sit watching TV, or travelling on a train/in a car/on a plane. I can see my mother reaching for her crochet, for something to do in those snatched moments of time, and then see myself doing it too.

I keep remembering a woman I encountered on a train once. Christmas 1996, Dumbo and I caught the night train from Sydney to Melbourne. Sitting on the other side of the aisle was the stereotypical Aussie Battler and his wife together with their three children: an 8 year old girl, a 5 year old boy and a toddler. I watched them covertly, facinated. The Aussie Battler* and his wife are mythical country people, fighting against the odds, battling drought and floods to raise their cattle, farm their land and breed their sheep. And here they were in front of me.

They looked to be old parents, probably in their 50's, their faces weathered by the sun. In their dress, it could have been the 1950's: he wore proper trousers and an open-necked short sleeved shirt (I'm sure there was a tie tucked away somewhere); she wore a floral shirt-waister. From snatches of their conversation, I worked out that they were farmers who'd been to Sydney for the day - they'd visited the bank and a medical specialist. Why? I didn't hear. They were making a long round trip to/from Dubbo, so the visits must have been important. (Dubbo has a big hospital and plenty of banks) Whatever had happened in Sydney, they were worried and relieved to be heading home. It hadn't been the best of days. Through much of that long evening, until 2.30am when they left the train, she knitted away her worries. She said as much, once, to her husband when he asked her why she didn't have a nap.

To that Aussie Battler's Wife, from one member of the Code to another, I salute you.

- Pam

*If you ever get the chance, read Henry Lawson's "Joe Wilson's Mates". Joe is the embodiment of the Aussie Battler.

Frugal Friday - to save or not to save, that is the question

2010-07-23T18:26:00.002Z

As I struggled out of the office today (lugging my laptop, my handbag, an envelope full of invoices and a lidded plastic bucket that had just been emptied of the last of the office's dishwasher tablets), I started thinking about CrazyAuntPurl's recent post about clutter and obsessively collecting stuff for the sake of having stuff.

(First though, a diversion: why the plastic bucket? To make a nettle "stew" to feed my tomatoes next year. Stuff the bucket with young nettles, chop them if you want. Cover with water and a lid and allow to rot down for at least a month. Use as a liquid feed, pouring undiluted around the tomatoes. You can dump the residual gunk around them too - apparently, they love it (it's rich in nitrogen). It stinks, hence the lid. You can do the same thing to comfrey to make a more nutritious "tea", but I don't have that growing whereas nettles are free and not hard to find. I just stalked a suitable bucket and purloined it when it was almost empty.)

CrazyAuntPurl talks occasionally about how too much stuff becomes oppressive and that you end up feeling like the stuff owns you, instead of the other way around. It takes over your home, preventing you from relaxing because a) you have to clean it all, and b) you can't readily find whatever-it-is you were looking for because there is too much stuff in the way so you end up buying a new one. And, eventually, you end up living like a bag lady in your own home because there is so much junk hoarded there that it takes over.

As I struggled with the door to the office car park, I looked at the bucket in my hand and I wondered if that is the slippery slope I'm heading down. I don't need it "right now" - I won't be able to make nettle stew until next spring - so will have to store it. Will it turn into just another thing to find a home for/get in the way/forget about?

I don't think of myself as a big collector of things. When we put the house back together, I won't need a wall of display cases to show off my collections. I don't collect Royal Doulton figurines or stamps. Nor do I clutter up the spare bed with stuffed toys*. But I do collect books. And knitting magazines. And yarn. And embroidery stuff...

...And bread bags. And the tubs from Innocent Veg Pots. And small plastic containers. And soup containers. And Douwe Egbert jars. And Yeo Valley yoghurt pots.....

Hmm.... Maybe I could have a problem? My kitchen has the potential to be a hoarder's paradise. At least one of the letters published in the Tightwad Gazette laments: I've saved bread ties and egg cartons and orange juice lids, etc, but what do I do with all this stuff? Amy's response boils down to "only collect what you need. If it doesn't have a use, don't collect it".

It's a balancing act. One of the hard parts of frugally acquiring things that are useful is that they don't usually appear just when you need them. I've learned to snap up free/cheap items with potential because they won't be there when I go back looking of them. (I'm still lamenting not buying that double-boiler from the charity shop when candle making was only a vague idea in the back of my mind. I had to buy the more expensive microwave wax and sacrifice a glass jug because it's safer than heating wax directly on the stove top.)

I've only collect the bread bags, etc, because I have a use for them. I use the bread bags instead of freezer bags, particularly for meat and fish. I give the Veg Pot tubs away filled with coconut rough. The soup containers fit the freezer door's shelves so I freeze them full of stock, and smalz, and leftover stew. I store my spices in the Douwe Egbert jars. I use the yoghurt pots as starter pots when gardening. And they can also be used as plastic glasses for parties (we found this one out by accident when hosting a BBQ. People helped themselves to the tower of clear plastic "pint glasses" in the kitchen).

However, I don't need 100 yoghurt pots. And I recognise that there is a point where you have to call "stop" and just bin the excess however useful they may be in the future (for instance: I store the bread bags in an old tissue box; when it's full, I bin any excess). Hopefully there won't be an episode of Life Laundry for me.

- Pam

* I think I still own four soft toys: two rabbits made by my mother, a tiny teddy bear acquired from somewhere and Bearjing, a 12-inch white teddy bear that I picked up in Beijing in 1986.

accidental hiatus

2010-07-20T18:25:00.002Z

It seems as if everyone is taking a bit of a hiatus in the blogosphere. Me included. I don't know if it's the lazy, hazy days of summer or the pressure of work. In my case, it's a combination of everything and sheer exhaustion. The bite on my ankle turned nasty, which probably hasn't helped. I'm on my second course of antibiotics for it. Cellulitis - I haven't seen it for 20+ years, but boy is it recognisable.

I have a week's leave booked for the first week of August and I'm really looking forward to it. We aren't going anywhere; it's just a chance to rest and recuperate.

In the meantime, I'm running on coffee.

- Pam

Why do insects keep taking chunks out of me?

2010-07-01T06:04:00.000Z

I am getting seriously pissed off at whatever it is that keeps biting me. Why am I such a bug magnet? I know that if there is a mosquito anywhere within two miles, it'll find me, but these are something else. What is making me so tasty? Whatever it is, I need to work it out soon, before I start looking like I've got chicken pox. (No, I don't have chicken pox for a third time. I have clear memories of last time and these bites aren't it.)

And I don't even think it is all the same type of bug. This is my arm, a week after I noticed the first bite appeared:

It wasn't itchy. Then something else munched me around the elbow, and boy did THAT itch. Then, on Tuesday evening as I parked up at my hotel, something took a bite out of my ankle. Again, I didn't feel the bite. I caught my ankle with my suitcase as I unloaded it and suddenly it was massively itchy and swollen. Yesterday evening, it had a deep red ring around a white spot. Today, not so much.

(Also, why is it when you wait for better light to take a photo bite marks go down? It was furiously angry 8 hours ago.)

I haven't got a clue what bugs are doing the biting - I've reached the point of longing for the days when the enemy was just honest to goodness mosquitoes.

- Pam

The best birthday present ever?

2010-06-30T21:58:00.000Z

If you had a sporting fantasy, what would it be? For many of my friends, it'd be to score the winning goal for England in the final of the World Cup. For a few others, it'd be to score a century in an Ashes test match and then take five wickets. For me, it'd be horse related: riding at Hickstead or show jumping at the Horse of the Year Show or doing a National Velvet and riding the winner of the Grand National.

When I was trying to figure out what to buy DH for his 40th birthday last year, I wondered what his would be and whether I could give him a gift that would fulfil it. I don't know what his was, but I can make a good guess what it is now.

On Sunday, DH "spent" his 40th Birthday Present: a Formula Silverstone single-seater "driving experience": 20 minutes driving a racing car around one of the circuits at Silverstone, the home of the British Grand Prix. He had a ball! I lost count of the number of laps he did, but he loved every minute of it. You can't see the smile on his face in the photo above, but I assure you it was there.

There were 18 drivers in DH's group. His session started with a short (20 minute) briefing about how to drive the track: when to brake, when to change gear, what is the best line to take through the bends. That was followed by a short "how to operate the car" briefing session in the pit lanes and then he was helped into his vehicle by a member of staff, who also went over the vehicle's controls. The cars were led out in groups of 6; each group had its own safety car. The safety car led them round the track at ever increasing speeds, before setting them free to race each other around the track for 10 minutes.

I'm really glad he loved it. I chose it for two reasons: it had the longest driving time of all the Red Letter Day driving experiences on offer, and it's something that appeals to me, which I thought would appeal to him too. Score 2:0 to me.

- Pam

Random. Just Random.

2010-06-24T19:29:00.000Z

In the things I wish I could remember department:

I wish I could remember how to reset the clock on the stove. (Or, alternatively, what we did with the manual.) I'm sure I used to know but it isn't intuitive and it's been 7 years since there was power to the clock and ovens. (We used the gas hob.) The electrician has wired it up temporarily for us and I've used both ovens, but I'd really, really like to set the clock to the correct time. I've emailed the manufacturer - fingers crossed they can help me.

-----------------------

Football

Have you been watching the World Cup? Yesterday was a rather nail-biting day for me. I'm cursed with having two national teams to follow: Australia and England. England needed to win to progress to the knock-out stages. If Australia were to progress, they needed both a big win (with a goal difference of 3 or more) AND either Germany or Ghana to win the other match in their group.

The canteen at work has been showing all the daytime matches on their big TV. The England match was at 3pm so a group of us went down to watch. (By the end of the match, there was 200 people in there.) It was nerve-wracking! I think I swore more in those 90+ minutes than I have ever sworn in the office. Fortunately, England played like a team, defended well and won by a goal to nil. It was the best they've played in this competition - their match against the USA was OK but they looked nervous, while their game against Nigeria was dire.

Australia's game was at 7.30pm and not broadcast on terrestrial TV, so I watched the German game. It was so frustrating! I have only managed to watch one out of the three Australian matches and I was hoping to watch this one. No dice. We won, with two good goals, but it wasn't enough to go through.

Congratulations to the American team for getting through to the last 16.

--------------------------

In Other News...

Can't remember if I've told you but DH is working a temporary job and has been since the second week of May. It's for a contractor for London Transport, which means that every day is in a different location. It's shift work. The hours are awful. And he has to get there by public transport so an 8 hour shift is really a minimum of an 11 hour day. It's not in his field. But any job is better than no job and he's happy to be earning some money.

- Pam

Sit-Rep 2010 - April/May

2010-06-15T21:47:00.000Z

Hi everyone! I'm still here. Life's been interfering a bit in my plans and I haven't been on-line as much as usual, hence the lack of blogging. Something similar happened last month, which is why I didn't post a Sit-Rep for April. However, I decided I couldn't let two months go past without comment, even though it's now the middle of June. (Hell, if BostonGal can do her monthly updates late, then so can I.) So here goes....

STASH Maintained 100% cold sheep, however I feel like I'm cheating since I rarely buy yarn on-line and haven't been near either a yarn shop or a show, so I haven't been tempted. Knitted a reasonable amount, however, completing the left front of the Brown Cabled Cardigan (Rav link) as well as 2.5 pairs of socks AND ripping out and reknitting the back of the Mohair Cardigan (Rav link) from Verena Knitting. The socks didn't use up complete skeins - even on the pair for DH I have 20g or so left over - so I estimate that I've used two skeins of sock yarn plus one skein of the Heathland Hebridean (in the cardi) and 1/3 of a skein of the mohair in the last two months. Also DH extracted the stash basket from storage so I've been able to give P's mum the two balls of Artesano Alpaca DK. That's 5.3 skeins of yarn, for a total of 10.5 skeins.

GARDEN The garden is a bit of a war zone, with me on one side and the weeds + black-fly on the other. Since the last update, I've sown/planted out courgettes, jalapeno chillis, tomatoes, yellow bell peppers, runner beans, butternut squash and rocket. Most of them are in containers or grow bags beside the back door. I'm currently raising five pak choi seedlings, which I hope to plant out in a week or so. Harvested the first broad-beans on Sunday. I'll freeze the rest, when they're large enough. I watched Alys Fowler's Edible Garden on the BBC and was impressed enough to buy the book. It's well written, detailed and answers the sort of questions that aren't covered in other gardening books, things novice gardeners (like me) need to know but can't find the answer to.

FITNESS Very little to report. I'm attending yoga and pilates classes when I'm in the office. Haven't been near Weight Watchers and don't know if I've lost any more weight. Oh, and I still haven't run a step.

OVERDRAFT The debt pay down is going well: £153.54 in April and £228.24 in May, for a total repaid of £737.16 since the start of the year.

SOCKS Completed DH's Weird Science socks. I don't have photos yet, but when I do I promise to include one showing the pattern on the back of the leg - it's different to the front of the leg and was not shown in the pattern. (I don't think he's worn them yet, although he says he likes them.) The Zig-Zag socks were a big hit with Eldest Sis and I completed a pair of self-striping socks for myself. Don't think I'll be able to produce a pair of socks in June - it's half way through the month and I haven't started any yet. I'll do a separate FO show-and-tell post this weekend.

- Pam

Frugal Friday - Cheap Make-up Review: Tesco's All About Face range

2010-05-27T23:25:00.003Z

Tuesday morning, I was a mile from Site when I brushed some dried mascara from my eye and realised that I'd forgotten to pack my make-up. I had a lipstick but nothing else so, after work, I headed into the nearest major town and went to the supermarket.

It's ages since I've bought make-up base, so ago long that I'm not even sure what is on offer now. Several years ago, I struck gold on the clearance shelf at Boots The Chemist - 6 bottles of their "17" brand make-up base, in my shade, at 50p a bottle. I thought they'd last, maybe, a total of two years. Instead, each bottle lasts about 10 months (and I've still got one left!). Also in my stockpile at home are a couple of containers of Max Factor Pan Cake (perfect for hot, humid weather when regular make-up vanishes in your sweat), and a tube of Pan Stick*.

On Tuesday, my goal was to find the cheapest suitable products in colours that suit me. I wandered up and down the make-up aisle in Tesco and checked out the special offers. As a minimum, I needed make-up base, powder, blusher and mascara. Oh, and a make-up sponge, possibly brushes too.

After a couple of minutes, I noticed a small range of make-up that wasn't in the glossy display cases: Tesco's All About Face range. At £1.49 a product or £3 for three products, it was the cheapest too. They only had a couple of shades to choose from and no testers. However, I figured the worst thing that could happen was that I'd waste £3 and be back there the next night buying products from a "known" range. So I purchased a base in Ivory, a powder blusher in Rose, and translucent compressed powder (no shade specified).

They had a black mascara, too, but it isn't waterproof so I opted to buy my regular Maybelline mascara (£4.99) instead. And I bought some own-brand make-up sponges (£1.50) and a Tesco make-up brush set (£4.79).

So how good it is? Well, the make-up base is light and a good match for my skin. I didn't use a massive amount, just dotted it on my cheeks, nose, forehead, and blended with a sponge. The powder covers well and is the same shade as the base. The blusher goes on lightly with a brush, spreads out well and blends in. The make-up holds up well to daily wear and tear. And doesn't look cheap and nasty. I asked a friend for her opinion and she thought the colours were great on me and that it still looked fresh at 3 in the afternoon. She was surprised when I told her how little they'd cost.

So, if you don't have much money and are looking for some decent make-up, do consider Tesco's All About Face range. It's very good value for money and I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

- Pam (the brushes are very nice, too)

(Edited later to add: Skip the makeup base. It beads on the skin and isn't easily absorbed. When it does dry, it dries blotchy. The product that does all the work to get a good finish is the powder, so just buy that.)

* To use Pan Stick and not feel like you've applied a heavy layer of lard to your face or have it come off, apply as follows:

Draw a cross on your forehead.
With the angle pointing towards your nose, draw a ">" on one cheek and a "<" on the other.
Put a one inch line across your chin.
Dot once on each side of the tip of your nose.

Using a make-up sponge, spread the Pan Stick over your face. Dust with loose translucent powder to "fix".

Telekenesis anyone?

2010-05-25T22:24:00.000Z

One of the stranger side-effects of all our building work is being without a stash. Virtually all my yarn is in a storage unit, with the majority of our belongings. The stash is corralled into at least two boxes, two baskets and a pine blanket box, in the furthest corner of the unit, behind everything else.

When we were packing up, I set aside the wool for the Brown Cabled Cardigan, as well as two pair's worth of sock yarn. I've finished three pairs of socks since then (I had one pair on the needles). Since I'm going "cold sheep", this lack of yarn has made me think about what I'll do with the little bits I have. At home, I'm knitting on the cardigan, so that's a no-brainer. I have a long neglected travel knitting project, the Bolero Cardigan from the Summer 2008 edition of Verena, which gets centre stage now that I'm out of socks. I'll get very close to finishing it this week, while I'm at site.

Right now, I have three partial skeins of sock yarn left and they aren't compatible so can't be combined into a pair of socks. (One is DK; the others, 4ply. The colours wouldn't mix either.) I could really do with a session rummaging through that dark brown basket, which is full of single skeins and sock yarn. I don't want to do a big raid - I'd just like to extract a skein of Lisa Souza's Sock! in Ecru, so that I can knit contrasting feet onto the remnants of the 4-ply. (Sorry, I know I haven't posted photos yet. I will get around to them when I post my Sit.Rep at the end of the month.)

More importantly, there are a couple of skeins of pink Alpaca buried in there that I'd like to give to a friend's mum. She's a knitter and she's not very well and I'd like to give her something special to play with. I reckon it will be another six weeks before we clear out the storage unit and I don't know if I can wait that long. I'm wondering if I can persuade DH to dig it out for me. Knowing my luck, it won't be in the brown basket (probability it's in there = 70%).

In my heart of hearts, I know can't really ask him to do it. There are dozens of boxes in the way as well as a couple of pieces of furniture. I wish I could TK the damn basket to the front of the unit and save all the effort needed to move boxes around/out of the way.

- Pam

Cooking in the danger zone (and more house photos)

2010-05-21T21:27:00.001Z

This evening, as I was cooking dinner, I kept banging into things. It occurred to me, while my sandal caught on the shoe rack residing in front of the draining board, that I'm cooking in a danger zone. Everything is temporarily in a different place to where it was before the building work started, and more and more things have found their way into the kitchen because there was nowhere else for them to go.

This is my kitchen at the moment - stove view:

That picture was taken before all the dust and a lot of the stuff migrated in. And as it is now...

Absolutely everything covered in dust and everything is in the way, including Spikey (the yucca plant), the uplighter that is our main source of light downstairs at the moment and the shoe rack that earlier tried to mate with my sandal.

Frankly, I'm just glad I can cook in this kitchen, even if it does mean moving everything out of the way and washing the dust off everything before I start cooking. Tonight, I found myself in the crazy position of holding onto the microwave to prevent it banging against the hot cooking pot when the washing machine went into spin cycle.

Looking the other way:

Yes, everything ends up on the kitchen table, because there is nowhere else to put it. We can't put it on the floor because the roof now has a tendency to leak in new and exciting places every time it rains.

One of the things that found it's way "into" the kitchen is a new doorway. You may remember the original doorway was rather low. (Turned out to be at least 6 inches lower than a regular doorway.) It was also, annoyingly off-centre when compared to the picture window on the other side of the kitchen. When the builders stripped off the plaster, they found this:

The doorway was inserted into a much larger space, which looked like it had once been a glass door flanked by two smaller windows. The lintel was miles up and very long. If you look more closely, you can see an arch built above the existing doorway.

I asked the builder if he could move the doorway about a foot over to the right. Two Mondays ago, I came home to find this:

and

The doorway had vanished. Sorry, they're a little blurry. (In case you're wondering, Spikey isn't sick. He's been decapitated because he was much too top heavy and we're waiting for him to recover from the shock. We chopped his "head" into two parts and both Baby Spike and Posh Spike are doing well, according to their recipients.)

I took those photos just before I rushed out the door to go to Site last Tuesday. When I got back on Friday, the new doorway had been built.

And from inside the kitchen.

By this time next week, it should even have French doors on it!

- Pam

It's over

2010-05-12T05:14:00.000Z

Gordon Brown resigned yesterday as Prime Minister and the Queen appointed David Cameron PM. The new government will be a Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition. I failed as a sear. My predictions for the cabinet were rubbish. The only things I got correct were Cameron as PM and Nick Clegg as Deputy Prime Minister. However, according to the BBC, I did get the right the names of some of the main players:

Mr Cameron has already begun the work of appointing his first cabinet, with the Tories' George Osborne as Chancellor, William Hague as Foreign Secretary, Liam Fox as Defence Secretary and Andrew Lansley as Health Secretary.

- Pam ("normal" blog service will resume shortly)

8:0

2010-05-09T21:20:00.001Z

I don't think I've written about Football before, but today was a rather momentous day - my team, Chelsea, won the Premiership! And I went to the match.

This morning, we had a one point lead over Manchester United. And one game to go - a home match against Wigan Athletic. We had to win the match in order to win the title. A draw wouldn't do. When the players walked out onto the pitch, you could have cut the tension in Stamford Bridge with a knife.

Everyone was jumpy. And the ball wasn't going where we wanted.

Six minutes into the game, Anelka scored! The stadium erupted. We had the goal we needed to win the match and, as long as we could keep our lead over them, we'd win the Premiership.

But Wigan refused to lie down. They came back at us again and again. At about 30 minutes in, a Wigan player cut down a Chelsea player in the Wigan goal mouth. Penalty! Frank Lampard faced the Wigan keeper. And scored!

The third goal was Salomon Kalou's.

The fourth and fifth took Didier Drogba to the top of the table of goal scorers and won him the Golden Boot.

On the fifth goal, Chelsea achieved the milestone of 100 goals in a season. The first team ever to do so. By the eighth goal, we'd set another record - our biggest win EVER. Plus, our Keeper, Peter Cech won the Golden Gloves for the most clean sheets of the season.

Congratulations Chelsea FC.

- Pam (Stick that in your pipe ManU and smoke it!)

Well that makes things interesting

2010-05-07T16:24:00.001Z

Yesterday was the British General Election. As predicted by me a month ago, it was the Conservatives for the losing. The Labour Party have been resoundly defeated in government, losing 91 seats whilst the Tories have gained 97, and the Lib Dems have surprisingly lost 5 seats. As I type, the Conservatives have 305 seats, Labour has 258 and the Liberal Democrats have 57, with 2 seats left to declare.

However, with those numbers, it is impossible for the Conservatives to win a majority and govern in their own right. They needed 326 seats to gain the majority and to be an effective government they'd really need another 20-30 on top of that (to allow for dissent, disaffection and deaths among their MPs). So now the horse-trading has to commence and that will make things interesting for a while.

So far, David Cameron has made a public offer to the Lib Dems inviting them "to work together", whatever that means. It could be as simple as a pact buying the Lib Dems off so that they don't vote down the Budget and the Queen's Speech (without which the government fails), or it could be a full coalition with Lib Dems occupying key ministerial posts.

I think it would be in the country's best interest for the Conservatives to invite the Lib Dems to form a coalition government, otherwise after six or twelve months of paralysis we'll be facing another election. And we can't afford 12 months of paralysis - Britain's deficit and national debt are huge, many people are still facing job losses and unemployment, personal debt burdens are immense, and large sections of the population never benefited from the boom in the first place. Also, a coalition government will temper the more "lunatic fringe" ideas on both sides, since no politician wants to risk losing his government job if he can help it. Politics here is frequently more about applying the latest political theory or dogma and less about taking a pragmatic approach to problems; a coalition would help prevent that.

Here are my ministerial predictions for the future Conservative-Liberal Coalition:-

Prime Minister - David Cameron (C)
Chancellor of the Exchequer - Vince Cable (L) (the only politician who can say "I told you so" over the banking crisis/credit crunch)
Foreign Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister - Nick Clegg (L)
Home Secretary - William Hague (C)
Industry Secretary - George Osborne (C) (actually, I might swap him over with William Hague)
Health Secretary - Dr Liam Fox (C) (it'd be a pleasant change to actually have a medical doctor in charge of the NHS)

As for the rest of the posts, I'm not sure. For now, I'm just glad it's over.

- Pam

PS: I think this was the largest voter turnout for decades. Certainly many polling stations were ill-equipped to deal with the number of voters and there were many queues. Several polling stations closed their doors in voters faces at 10pm (when the law says they have to close), denying the voters their right to vote. One polling station in Lewisham did the sensible thing - they corralled the queue inside, so they could vote, and then shut the doors. It's probable there will be a few legal challenges arising from the disarray and possibly a couple of by-elections.

And the answer is...

2010-04-29T20:56:00.000Z

£64. That's the net amount in my pocket of my pay rise each month. Better than I thought, although not as good as it would have been if personal allowances weren't frozen this tax year (i.e. frozen at last year's level).

No, it's not going on yarn. It's going to the joint account where it'll probably get spent on bills or builders.

- Pam (may spend a little bit on an Audible subscription, though)

Update on BIL

2010-04-28T21:31:00.000Z

I haven't told you what happened to my BIL after he was marooned in Germany due to the volcano. The short answer is that he didn't make it to London. He'd bought a ticket on Eurostar to travel last Wednesday, but German airspace reopened so he flew home instead.

Am I disappointed? Yes. I'd have loved to see him. But I'm glad he got home safe.

- Pam

Impatient!

2010-04-28T14:07:00.001Z

It's two days to the end of the month and I'm impatient to get paid. This month's paypacket is the first after I was told I'd received a small raise and I want to see how much that translates to after tax and NI. I know it won't be much - somewhere around £60 extra a month in my pocket. But it'd be nice to know for sure - the perfectionist in me wants precision and my old rule of thumb, that each £500 translates to £25 net a month, has been complicated by changes to the NI rates and deductions for pension contributions, the employee share scheme and me buying an extra week's holiday (won't need to do that next year - at the rate I'm not using my vacation time, I'll have 2-3 weeks' leave to roll over in September). .

If the truth be told, I'm always impatient at this time of the month. It used to be a feast-famine reaction: Payday = Money to spend. (Yay!!! Just think of the possibilities! Oops, it's all gone!) Two days before Payday = No money left = Almost broke. (Booo! Must. Have. Cash. Now!) However, over the last few months, since I got serious about micro-managing my money, I've become impatient for Payday so that I can do my accounts and work out how much further my overdraft should decrease next month. I want the virtuous reward of watching that balance go down.

In theory, I could work out my tax position and take-home-pay position for the next year, but I'm too lazy. Instead, I'm impatiently checking our electronic payslip system every morning to see if the data's been posted yet. (Also, once it's there on the screen and in my bank account, I'll know the b*stards have followed through with their promise.) Only two days to go.

- Pam

It pays to listen.

2010-04-24T21:19:00.001Z

Sometimes Fate comes along and whispers in your ear. If you don't listen, she goes away and, occasionally, comes back and belts you round the head with a rubber hammer until you pay attention. That's what she's done to us today. In our case, it was to do with the back door.

Our "back door" is a full height sliding window. To my eyes, it's inside out - the sliding window runs along the outside moving from left to right, whilst the fixed window on the right is on the inside. In Oz, the sliding window would run on the inside; on the outside, you'd have a sliding fly-wire screen door. (I have to confess, I have fantasised about replacing what we have with a Australian-style one, complete with screen door. Oh, how I'd love a fly-wire screen door to keep the bugs out.)

It has two locks. For the last year (ish), I've struggled closing the top lock. It was stiff, so I sprayed it with WD40. Strangely, the lock moved fine when it was away from the door jamb. After a couple of months, I think (the timeline is a bit hazy now), I worked out that the door needed to be slammed hard shut for that lock to work. At least once, earlier this week, I gave up fighting with the top lock and just locked the lower one.

Yesterday, we had a mid afternoon appointment so the builders had to lock up. Strangely, they left the top-lock's key in the lock, whereas the other one was hung up on its hook. This morning, I discovered why. They couldn't actually get the key disengaged from the lock. It was dark when we got back yesterday, so at 7am this morning I decided to water the vegetable garden. Only, I couldn't unlock the back door. Nor could I get the keys out. An hour or so later, DH succeeded. When we went out later, he locked up with a little bit of a struggle.

Obviously, at that stage, we weren't paying sufficient attention to Fate so she decided to step it up a gear. I noticed that the top of the door wasn't as closed as the bottom. Thus was born my first theory - that the door is hung inside out and the sliding door track is deteriorating in the weather. We covered the track in WD40 and hoped it'd be enough to keep the door working until we could get the builders to take a look at it. Wrong.

When the neighbour's BBQ smoke started drifting in this evening, we tried to close the door. And failed. Multiple times. Sometimes, it was as if a stop had been placed in the door maybe half an inch before the jamb. At other times, the door closed to within a millimetre or so of it's correct position - it looked closed but the lower lock wouldn't engage (we didn't bother to try the top lock). Overall, it was getting worse each time we tried shutting the door. We began to get a little panicky. We'd slam the door and it'd hit this invisible brake each time.

I watched DH as he absent mindedly bent down and tucked the outside rubber seal back against the glass. And that's when it hit me. The problem was caused by the inside rubber seal(!) at the point where the two windows are always crossed. I took a good look at it and it wasn't just sticking out of it's housing, it was dangling. D'oh! The seal was getting caught between the two windows and preventing the door moving further forward. (At this point, Fate put down her hammer.)

The challenge was to get the seal back between the window frame and the glass. 15 minutes of poking it with a ruler later, DH decided the only thing to do was to remove it. Problem. The seal was sticking out the other side of the door but, if he opened the door, it'd slip back behind the glass and be unreachable again. He climbed over the 6ft tall garden gate to get to it. It took another 10 minutes of poking and prodding before the seal was out and the door moving freely.

Right now, I'm sure Fate is polishing her hammer. The door is locked but the top lock still can't engage properly. We aren't sure what she's still trying to tell us. Do we need to rebuild the sill? Does the window need to be re-sealed professionally, rehung and rebalanced? Please don't tell us we need to replace the whole damn unit!

We'll throw ourselves on the mercy of the builders on Monday and hope they can work out what's wrong and how to fix it. I'm all out of inspiration.

- Pam

Dear Blogger or the reason I've switched the comments to moderation

2010-04-21T17:53:00.001Z

Dear Blogger

I am at my wits end. My blog keeps getting spammed via the comments. I have the word verification set up but that is not effective against manual spammers. I've repeatedly reported these spammers to you but they're like a hydra, cut off one and another takes its place. And there is no way to send you examples of what they're posting.

The format of the spam comments is always the same. A user ID in Chinese characters, followed by a nonsensical comment of, maybe, 20 words, followed by a hyperlink. Click on the hyperlink and you get a porn site. Here is the latest example:

王妍妮 has left a new comment on your post "Damn volcano":

Knowledge is power...................................

I've cut off the links, so don't bother clicking on them (no point giving them any more publicity). If you get comments like these, click on the user ID and the Blogger blog that they list there and then click on Report Abuse and follow the instructions. It doesn't allow you to report what is actually posted on your blog, but it is all you can do.

Anyway, this is why I've changed my comments set up to "moderate comments".

- Pam

Damn volcano

2010-04-17T08:12:00.000Z

My favourite headline from the last couple of days is one from yesterday's Daily Express: "Britain is Shut to the World". To me, it ranks up there with a classic from The Times "Fog in Channel. Europe Isolated" (apparently published on 22nd October 1957 according to a quick search). Neither are true, of course.

The eruption of the Eyjafjallajoekull volcano has thrown a huge spanner in many people's plans for the weekend: three people from Site have had their holidays cancelled. My Dutch colleagues can't get home. My client's French staff can't go home. And my brother-in-law is marooned in Dusseldorf.

When it all kicked off on Thursday morning, it didn't occur to me that BIL would be affected. Surely the ash cloud would dissipate by mid-afternoon, or get washed out of the sky (this is Britain after all. It rains almost daily). But no. By the time I got back to my hotel on Thursday evening, having sat in an office full of Dutchmen and Frenchmen all day, I knew that all the ferries were booked out and Eurostar was probably fully booked, too. (One of my colleagues even contemplated driving the 750km home to Rotterdam, but couldn't secure a ticket on le Shuttle. ) I could only hope that BIL had managed to secure the Eurostar tickets we'd talked about on the phone on Thursday afternoon.

Sadly, he hadn't. And flights haven't resumed. Slowly, my plans for this weekend went up the Swannee. Since we're currently living in our bedroom and the kitchen, BIL couldn't stay with us, but we'd planned to spend all day today with him. The plan was to go to Portsmouth and tour the Royal Dockyard, hopefully getting there in time to secure a boat trip in the harbour this afternoon.

It's a bloody great shame. I was really looking forward to catching up with BIL. He's a lovely guy and we don't see him that often. We probably won't see him at all now - they've booked him a backup flight direct from Germany to Australia, for when flying resumes in Germany. He's holding out hope that if the flight to London goes first, he'll come here instead, but he's risking getting stuck here instead of having a guaranteed flight home.

Yah-boo-sucks you damn volcano!

- Pam (shaking an impotent fist at a clear-looking sky)

The heart of the project

2010-04-14T20:42:00.000Z

Deep in the centre of our construction project, my colleague Bernard took this photo. Behold, the heart of the refinery:

- Pam (photo used with permission)

At last the phoney war is over

2010-04-10T07:59:00.000Z

In case you haven't heard, the date of the British General Election was announced on Tuesday, after Gordon Brown went to the Queen to request that she disolve parliament. The big day will be Thursday 6th May. And I can't wait. For the last six months or so, the political parties have been indulging in a "phoney war" - the political campaign you have when you can't call it an election campaign. (In Britain, the moment you call it an election campaign is the day the clock starts on the electoral expenses and each candidate has a legal maximum spending limit. The clock also starts if the candidates call themselves candidates or "parliamentary candidates" so they are known as "prospective parliamentary candidates" or "PPCs".)

Anyway, the phoney war has gone on so long that I am totally bored by it. Because of the rules regarding the life of a parliament, the election had to be held before mid-June. I don't know how the Americans put up with a year's worth of campaigning prior to their Presidential Elections. Don't you get fed up with it all?

It's not as if I'm a disinterested party, either. I think this is the first General Election when I haven't been involved in the campaign, one way or another. Once upon a time, I was a Young Conservative and a Conservative Party activist. My politics are a bit more confused than that, though. If you have to categorise me in terms of British politics, I'm a left-wing Tory or possibly a Lib-Dem. Back in the '80's, I voted for Bob Hawke, Australia's most successful Labor Prime Minister. If I was an American, I'd be a card carrying Democrat.

I joined the Tories when I came to the UK because my friends were Thatcherite Revolutionaries and it gave me an instant social life. Politics was fun and exciting as a YC: lots of intrigue against the "wets" in our own party; plenty of political debates about the big issues of the day (irony of ironies, in my day, the Tories didn't "do" political debates in the senior party); we put in the hours knocking on doors and delivering envelopes/magazines.

Many of my friends date from that time and very few of them are politically active today. What happened? We grew up. We got disilusioned and burned out. We got fed up campaigning for someone/some policy that we didn't believe in. There is nothing worse than the dying days of a government and our dying days lasted five years longer than expected (nobody had been more surprised than we were when John Major won the 1992 election. I remember being in a state of shock).

These days, I'm an interested outsider. The only times I've campaigned for anyone in the last 10 years is when I've supported one friend or another who has stood for their local council or for Parliament. Unless the phone rings, I think this will be the first General Election I haven't campaigned in since I came to Britain. (Note: I'd been here a week when I first went canvasing for the 1989 Euro elections, so I have a long history.)

Who do I think will be occupying 10 Downing Street in mid-May? Not Gordon Brown. He pissed off his natural electorate about two years ago, with his clumsily placed tax rises. He's been fighting a losing battle ever since. Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats, is putting up a credible campaign but it'd take a miracle for his party to win sufficient seats for them to even form Her Majesty's Opposition. So it's David Cameron's for the losing.

It's interesting to note that the Lib-Dems think Cameron will win. That's obvious from their arguments in various debates on BBC Newnight. They are only attacking the Tories; they aren't attacking policy announcements, etc, from the Government.

- Pam (don't think you'll get off lightly with me, David Cameron. I think your latest "tax break" of £3 a week for some married couples is risible, condescending and stupid.)

And finally

2010-04-04T16:55:00.000Z

Yes, we now have central heating! The new boiler was connected on Thursday and the house is MUCH warmer.

- Pam

To the man who built the wardrobe in our back bedroom

2010-04-04T16:54:00.000Z

Why? What were you thinking? Was it your first ever carpentry project?

Oh, and why did you use so many screws to fix it together? Were you bollocked last time you built something - did it fall down(?) - so that you were afraid your missus would nag you to death if the wardrobe wasn't stable? Either that, or were you on a promise that if you used up every screw in the packet, you might be on to a "winner"? What else can explain the gazillion screws you used, whether suitable or not? Why else were there masonry screws holding two bits of wood together? Have a look at your handy work*:

Seriously, what were you thinking? Even on the fascias you used three screws of varying sizes and types, plus the odd nail and wood glue! And you fastened it to the floor, the brick wall, and the plasterboard ceiling.

It took us** two days to demolish this!

- Pam

* This photo was taken after the "easy" part of the wardrobe was demolished. Before we started, there were two long cupboards, plus the connecting cupboards across the top and assorted pine panels arranged on the wall between them all (the black marks are the screw holes for those). If you look closely at the remaining wardrobe, you can see the chicken-pox of plastic covers he used to cover up all the screws. There is no logic to the number of screws he used or the varieties he used - some were Philips-head, some were flat-head, some were masonry screws screwing two bits of wood together (huh?), some were wood screws (including wood screws anchoring panels into the wall, with and without rawlplugs) and a few were plasterboard screws fixing the wardrobe to the ceiling and to the floor. Sometimes he used two screws on the same joint. He also smothered virtually every join with wood-glue just in case. And threw in the odd nail for good measure.

** DH did most of the hard work. I did a lot of unscrewing and plenty of fetching and carrying.

Sit-Rep 2010 - March

2010-04-04T15:56:00.001Z

STASH: Maintained cold sheep. Did virtually no knitting however this month, so estimate less than half a skein (i.e. less than 50g) used up, for a total of 6.5-ish skeins. Knitting time was minimal and compromised by lack of light. Not sure how much longer we will be without overhead lighting - am considering getting some sort of headlamp to aid working on the Brown Cable Cardigan (the current lighting is too dim to see what I'm doing when I'm cabling - may need to resort to using a cable needle again). Any suggestions?

GARDEN: Planted out 6 of the 7 broad bean plants, as well as the earliest of the seed potatoes. Have also planted out 50+ onion sets, shallot sets and loads of garlic cloves. Will sow chill seeds, sweet/bell pepper seeds, butternut pumpkin seeds and courgette seeds this weekend, as well as another variety of potato. Bought a propagator. Had to obtain extra tyres for the potatoes because 7 of last year's 8 tyres are holding down a tarpaulin on the kitchen roof (to prevent leaks).

OVERDRAFT: £108.83 repaid, for a total repaid of £355.38.

FITNESS: Five sessions of Pilates and three sessions of yoga attended. Rejoined Weight Watchers - walked to meeting once. 4 meetings attended. No miles run. Pounds lost = 4lb for a total of 6lb.

SOCKS: 3/4 of one sock completed for DH in Weird Science pattern from Yarn Forward. Next month should be better - BIL is coming to UK mid-April, so decided to whip up a pair of DK-weight socks for Eldest Sis (his wife) for him to deliver to her on her birthday at end of April. Have chosen simple pattern, the Zig-Zag Socks pattern by Jocelyn Sertich. Using stash yarn: Cherry Tree Hills Superwash Merino DK in the Cabin Fever colourway. Photos to follow.

- Pam

Another whine about feeling cold

2010-03-31T20:54:00.000Z

It's cold. We have no heating and haven't had since Monday morning, when the old boiler was removed. It's so cold that when I zapped some rock-hard coconut oil in order to soften it so that I could make coconut rough, it returned to rock-hard in the 20 minutes it took to eat dinner.

I know the weather here is relatively mild compared to some parts of the world but our houses aren't designed to cope without some form of heating. And it's turned decidedly wintry in the last week (it's snowed above 200 metres). We have the added disadvantage of several small holes in the walls downstairs creating a gazillion drafts. I've lived in cold houses before - my first two permanent homes in the UK didn't have central heating - however I'd forgotten what it was like. Both of those properties had some form of heating, just not in every room. Not here. Not now. Not until (hopefully) tomorrow.

The new boiler is "in" but it hasn't, yet, been connected to the gas. Almost all the new radiators are in position (the ones that aren't have to wait until after the new kitchen is installed).

I can't wait. Whilst running hot water would be nice, warm rooms would be lovely! (We have an electric power shower so are able to have hot showers, but everything else requires boiling the kettle.)

- Pam

PS: Don't worry - the tiles, etc, are still getting the chop.

Photos

2010-03-24T22:27:00.000Z

It's been a hellish week, very busy and very exhausting. Today, I was up at 4.45am in order to catch the shuttle to Glasgow. I got home at 7pm. Anyway, enough of me moaning. Here is what you really want - photos of the house!

Here are some before photos of the lounge taken when it was being used as a temporary resting place for stuff on the way to the storage locker. This is the view towards the front window. Note the cork tiles on the chimney breast and the suspended ceiling with the huge (useless) spot-lights.

And the view towards the kitchen:

The piano was the last piece of furniture to be moved. It's being stored by specialist piano movers.

On the left, you can just see the platform that was built over the floor where the original kitchen was until the '70's. And one of the brick feature walls. (Yes, that is the current kitchen through those doors.) Did I mention that we think the old owners used that space as a bar area? Seems logical when you look at it.

The only thing that is missing is the 1970's padded bar. This is what was behind all those bricks:

They're all gone now, along with the tiles you can see. So is the suspended ceiling (hello floorboards!). I think the paint you can see is original, dating from 1939. If you look closely, you can see the line of the old picture rails and, higher up, the line where the suspended ceiling was attached.

We've also kissed good-bye to the cork tiles on the chimney:

The pipes are from the back boiler, which will be removed next week together with the gas fire. (I want to install a wood-fire stove but we'll have to save up for that.)

The last big change is to the lounge room door. On the left, is the doorway we're filling in. It dates from the '70's. On the right, is the original doorway, which we've opened up again. The plan is to put the sofa in front of this wall but we're now worried it'll be too long.

- Pam