Curtains!

Ye gads, it has been cold recently! A combination of having been away for a fortnight, Scientist Boyfriend forgetting to turn the radiators back up when he put the heating on and the fact that it has simply been INCREDIBLY COLD outside, have all conspired to make our house less than cosy recently. The good news is that now it’s warmed up just a little bit, we can really feel it and I was walking around in a vest top this morning. However, the bad news is that there is something just a little unsettling about being able to see your own breath indoors.

With the help of tea, blankets, hot water bottles, hand-knitted alpaca socks and grim determination, we survived, and now, with spectacular timing, I have finally made those bloody curtains. Hurrah. My wonderful friend came over and pointed out that I’d been threading the sewing machine wrong, and now it works like a dream and does not snap threads or cause me to swear. I finished the curtains in less than 24 hours and made more progress on the suit I was making in the last 24 hours than I had in the whole of last year. Now we have to get curtain poles and hooks. I bet this takes us till March.

Thought…

I was thinking, as my header was making my shivering body crave the warm flavours of summer, that with a name like ‘Eating the Seasons’ I should really have a foodstuff appropriate to the time of year at the top of my blog.

*ponders*

Christmas in more detail

A few days of housework and wage-slavery have brought me back down from the rather emotionally-charged Christmas period. Thieving scumbags took Scientist Boyfriend’s family jewellery, which is horrid, but everything else was just stuff which can be replaced (or which we can do without), and it’s more the thought of big stompy burglar men leaving mud all over our carpets and rifling through my underwear drawer that upsets me. The forensic people came round, but there wasn’t anything they could get prints off, but they’re hoping to get more next door as they had to break a window to get in there. *fumes*

Other than that, though, Christmas was lovely, despite fearing permanent damage to my stomach lining from the enormous quantities of sparkling wine consumed. We were up with my parents in Northumberland for most of the time, eating vast amounts of yummy things, sandwiched between a couple of days with Scientist Boyfriend’s family, eating vast amounts of yummy things, and my Granny’s 80th birthday, where yet more yummy things were consumed in excess. (I have since been rather enthusiastic about brown rice and fresh vegetables. It’s all about balance, I suppose.) Despite a small accident with the marzipan (always read the recipe, don’t just guess!) my cakes were very successful, if rustic-looking, and much appreciated by my dad’s shooting buddies. (Scientist Boyfriend has been telling everyone since we got home about the two exciting things that happened to him over Christmas: ‘Well, Hamster and I got engaged….. AND, I shot a pheasant!!!’) I am now the proud owner of many decadent foodie things, a veritable cornucopia of fancy teas and an ergonomic hoe. Hoe hoe hoe.

I knitted the dalek. He was finished at 3 a.m. in the morning the day before midnight mass (‘Oh, just one more round, then I’ll go to sleep. Ooh, only 10 more to go now…’) I am rather proud of him, if I say so myself.

Knitted dalek

And now we have to plan a wedding. But we have until April or June 2010, and I’m determined not to become one of those neurotic women who gets slightly loopy and self-absorbed over it all. We’ve picked an area of the country, and will do exact date and venue once I’ve heard if I’ve got onto this course, and then I am not going to stress. I still have this crazy idea I can make my own dress, although I presume at some point in the next 18 months my mother will force me to see reason, as I haven’t even succeeded in making those sodding curtains without falling out with my sewing machine. Quite why I think I’ll be able to turn delicate fabrics into something that will be extensively photographed is a mystery to me as well. If I could knit it, I’d probably be all right but… well, I’m really rather conventional in terms of taste, if not of politics. Ah well, I suppose I’ll come into my own when all my friends start having babies….

Ooh, and I’m going to see Vandana Shiva on the 27th!! Yay!!

Eventful Christmas

Well, it’s been an eventful fortnight or so! On the plus side, Scientist Boyfriend is now Scientist Fiance, which is deeply exciting, and we got burgled while we were away, which was horrid.

Will update properly when I’ve calmed down a bit.