Rash of birthdays

I seem to have a lot of family birthdays to think about at this time of year. I'm not sure that I will keep knitting things for people every year, but perhaps everyone will get something knitted at least once. Here's what my Grandma is getting.

It's one of the Whisper Scarves. I knitted the other one for my sister last year in my first attempt at lace knitting. This was before I discovered that until it is blocked knitted lace looks all very fine, no matter how many mistakes are in it. Whenever I discovered I'd missed a yarnover or a K2Tog I just went ahead and increased or decreased whereever I was when I made the discovery. Obviously a big mistake. I was so disappointed when I blocked it and found the pattern all messed up! I've learned a bit since then. I can't see any errors in this one.

It's in Misti International Baby Alpaca, which I quite soft (but not exceedingly so). I was excited to find this yarn when I was walking Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn with my friend Amy recently and we stumbled on a great knitting store. They actually had a great range of yarns unlike the DC stores which tend to have exhaustive selections of a few expensive brands (eg Rowan...) plus a lot of hideous novelty yarn. Anyway, that was great. I was disappointed with the colours of this Misti yarn in the flesh - they seemed like much nicer colours on the screen. (Didn't stop me from buying a ball of course!) I think there's more blue in this colour than I would like. However, my Grandma has a nice burgundy coat that I can see her wearing this with. When I tried it on with a purply-red sweater of mine, it actually looked a lot less dull, and actually like quite a nice colour.

This is something I've discovered again recently. I ordered some yarns from Knit Picks and was really excited to get a ball of this yarn. The colours seem so gorgeous on the screen, but the one I got (Embers) is pretty odd in the flesh. It is weird mixture of a burnt sienna shot through with a luminous sort of orange. Very disappointing. I'm glad I only bought a ball to check it out and not enough for a whole sweater.

Valentines & boolgogi

My special friend took me for a Valentine's Day dinner at a new vegetarian place he'd sniffed out. The best part was probably the braised tofu and mushrooms, though the chocolate pudding was extremely nice - especially when I looked at the regular menu online the next day and figured that it was probably vegan - thus, non-dairy and thus actually OK for us given our current dietary restrictions (if you forget about the sugar...)

Since January 1 this year we've been eating according to Dr Gillian McKeith's notions about food with several results. A lot more energy is one. This is a big deal for me because at this time of year my energy levels usually sink to somewhere between "dying rat" and "dead rat". For the first time since I've lived at this god-forsaken lattitude, I'm getting up in the morning like a normal person - in February !!!! No more getting up and chasing breakfast with a mid-morning nap. Another nice benefit is now being able to take off my jeans without undoing them. No scales around here, but we are both commenting on the bits of us that are now missing...

All of this comes at a price, of course. Off the menu for now are caffeine, alchohol, wheat, dairy (except goat), refined grains, refined sugar, refined anything. We are thoroughly unrefined. There are probably a couple of other things we're not allowed to eat that I have blocked from my mind right now.

What we do eat includes: lots of sprouts, lots of vegetables, lots of fruit (but only in the morning or two hours after meals - this food combining thing makes getting through the day like taking the old Analytic section of the GRE).

Some things I've discovered about eating this way: smoothies made from nothing but fruit are possibly the most godly food conceivable. I especially like mango, banana and strawberry. I'd have that for breakfast everyday if Martin would bring home enough mangoes. Also, nuts and berries make very acceptable snacks. One last thing, when a Scottish woman suggests you season your chilli with cardamon and cinnamon, think hard. You have lived in this hemisphere for 7 years. You know that chilli happens with cumin, maybe some oregano, and, you know, chillies. Be strong, or you'll be hitting the organic chinese place for dinner again.

It's been a week of good discoveries food-wise, though, cardamon aside. After our trip to Vegetate on Tuesday night, I discovered a list of vegetarian eating houses online, through which I found the place we ate lunch on Friday when I visited young Martin at his office.

I am unbelievably, perhaps inexplicably, excited about this place. Perhaps it is the boolgogi (which I suspect is made of wheat gluten... oh dear.)

The very best thing about Java Green, though, which is impressive because the food is what you might call awesome, is that the restaurant is windpowered.

I have come never to expect DC to throw up any kind of pleasant surprise. It is generally the most predictably disappointing city you could imagine. Perhaps that's why this place made my week.

Snaggletooth

Although having a snow storm on the weekend means forgoing a cherished "snow day" off work, there is still nothing like a morning of fresh snow. Something I like especially about it is how it brings people out of their houses and also out of themselves. Martin and I built this snowman which elicited several comments during construction. One woman pointed him out to her dog!


When I prodded him for praise Martin agreed that I have natural snowman making ability - "once I got the hang of it"... Here is why he is wrong: I care much more for the snowman than he. Turns out that snowmen start out as little snowball embryos which you roll along the ground to gather up more snow. When I really gets going it peels a full layer of snow off the ground, as though you were rolling up instant turf. This means that a certain amount of fibrous matter can end up clinging to your snowball. Some of us - mere amateur snowman makers - stopped to brush this off. Others, "experienced", lifelong artisans left it all there so that our creation was quite leprous looking. I had to apply a layer of snow makeup to fix this.

All up, Martin turns out to be a rotten tutor in snow matters. After pounding me all morning with snowballs aimed at the legs (and managing to duck all of mine) I made a nicely compacted snowball and shot him in the back with it. He replied with "you realise that is as hard as a rock" (not supposed to compact your snowballs it turns out) and a rock-hard snowball to my thinly dressed bum. There will definitely be a bruise and I'm not ashamed to say I cried briefly! If this is his idea of education I think we will stick to making snow people for now.

A local snow-woman - with child.

A view of the zoo from our roof.

Two kittens walked into a bar...

This is how Martin got me to smile for this photo. I'm not a big smiler in photos and tend to get very strange looking unless I actually see something to smile about. I guess I should be smiling about the basic premise of this photo, which is that I finished knitting my first sweater! My dear pigeon seems more impressed on this score than I am. I will admit that it is a charming design, and makes me very soft and cuddly (cashmere/merino), but to think it impressive that I finished knitting it seems a little harsh to me. Yes, there is the small matter of the unfinished, barely started, dissertation, but that might be part of a different, larger problem than an inability to finish things.

The Greatest Show on Earth

This is how the Royal Adelaide Show was advertised when I was a child. Before I explain what this is all about, please note that it is royal like many other things in my home country. How they get that way is not really clear to me, but it can hardly hurt, can it?

How to explain The Show? Imagine a county fair. Held in the middle of a big city.

But with cows.
(This one's being vacuumed.)


And goats.



And enormous tractors.


But also competitions in the domestic arts.

(Here are some culturally appropriate comestibles - pies and pasties and sausage rolls - getting the respect they deserve.)


And the pioneer arts.

(This is competitive wood chopping - veterans division.)


And carnie food.



We decided to take the baby.

She loved it! She is one high stimulation baby. I was too terrified to get out the camera when we walked through the poultry pavillion. (Do you have any idea how enormous a fully grown rooster can be?) But let me tell you, we walked up and down long rows of double stacked cages of these things, crowing their heads off (well, wouldn't you if you were a prize leghorn?) Little Scarlett loved it! No palpitations for her!


And a magical spontaneous nap.

We were very proud.

Spot the Difference

One of these photos is of my niece, Scarlett, with an expression her mother has compared to the facial features of a bunyip. The other is a photo of a bunyip. So which is which?

When votes have been counted, I'll give you all a short lecture on the history, zoology, and family tree of the bunyip.

What's new

Someone has noticed that it has been a while since I wrote anything here. In fact, two people. I figure this means these people are not doing enough at work, and that they know who they are and don't need to be named, and feel ashamed of themselves.

Speaking of people who are not doing enough in the way of work, my steady progress towards a dissertation is unfortunately not the main reason I've been quiet. Here is a list of some of the things that have been keeping me busy for the last while:

• Starting work as a "teachers' aide" at my mum's school. I'm there one or two days a week and am being paid a prince's ransom for making children's handprints, stapling origami to streamers, attaching origami to dowels, helping children make origami, applying bandaids and encouraging children to work out what their last names are by checking the labels inside their hats.
• Taking a completely unearned vacation to the Yorke Peninsula to the old gypsum mine where my friends and I used to stay for drunken stints back in the day. Nothing has changed. We are fatter and bring cases of champagne instead of cases of beer, get heartburn after only two days of booziness, don't bother to go for a walk for reefer smoking. Inneston, though, is just as it was.
• Saying goodbye to my friend Lauren who has returned to Boston to finish her political theory PhD. This involved several weeks of heavy attendance at pub trivia nights where we proved that a table with two and two half PhDs was not worthy of a $60 bar tab.
• Getting my green coat back from Miss Dodgy - who is still lying about how she got it. (V. long story involving physical evidence in the pocket of said coat...)
• Celebrating the 30th birthday of someone whose 16th birthday party I attended. Worse, his little sister, who was 7 at the last event was there. She has breasts, a boyfriend, and is of legal drinking age - even in the US! This kind of thing must stop!