Julie's Stuff

I used to be a big baker. Chocolate mostly, because I like it best, but fruit cakes and other cakes too. But the Boy is not a big cake eater, so baking slowed a little over the past 10 years. The one cake he does like is plain butter cake (along with sultana butter cake and Maidera cake from White Wings), but that’s a bit boring to make. Then one day Kris posted a link to this purple ombré cake, and the Boy was in love. His favourite colour is purple, so a multi-tinted purple, but otherwise plain, cake looked like heaven to him. The idea of the cake festered for a while – there’s no way I was making it for just the two of us. But today was the day. We had a couple of people over for a BBQ and the Boy lobbied hard for the purple cake. Given that I’ve been on holidays this week, I had the time, so I agreed. A couple of hours (more like three when all said and done), we have a reasonable facsimile of said cake:

Not perfect, but tasty if you like plain butter cake with plain vanilla butter cream and the odd sprinkle! I should have stayed with the dark purple on top and paid more attention to the level-ness of each layer, but the guests seemed impressed nonetheless.

After spending the last hour reading past Christmas blog posts from previous years, I realise that if I don’t post a photo or two of this years tree I’m going to be annoyed in about 5 years time. So, for future me, here is this years tree and year bauble:

This year’s bauble is shiny, so I embraced the shine and you can see that I’m now taking all my photos with my iPhone. Yes, after the latest software update it takes better photos than my camera does, and it’s easier to get the photos into the blog using photostream and my iPad to blog. Ah, technology, love it. Except for Angry Birds, which has turned me into a widow this year, as the Boy obsesses as I write about getting that last three star level…..

We interrupt blog silence to introduce the latest produce from the garden:

We finally have a cucumber, well, we hope it’s a cucumber in there…. And more than two little tomatoes. Lettuce has been about touch and go this year,with really hot weather followed by lots of rain resulting in lettuce rotting and/or going to seed. We continue to plant more seedlings and hope.

I took April off as long service leave. I highly recommend taking off whole months – it makes it far easier to tell people when you’ll be on holidays. I went to Solar Springs with my Mum for a week (also highly recommended), and for the rest of the time I played housewife. I did all the things that I normally try to cram into the weekend (grocery shopping, washing, miscellaneous chores) during the week, along with much lazing around, reading, knitting and web surfing. I was mostly ready to go back to work when it was over, but honestly, I reckon I could retire now if I was independently wealthy.

There were a couple of things I learnt whilst on holidays:

Item the first: That spending vast sums of money on a camera really does make a difference. The Boy and I went to the Zoo and took photos of penguins. Well, the Boy with his fancy camera took photos of penguins:

I took photos of penguin tails:

Item the second: Putting soap in the microwave makes Soap Man:

We bought new (blessedly silent – the old one beeped incessantly, the new one has a “no beeps” option) microwave and had lots of fun putting stuff that you shouldn’t put in a microwave in the old one. Hours of fun. The soap smelt really bad, but the result was surprising. Steel wool and foil had predictably dramatic results. We haven’t thrown out the old one yet, so any more suggestions?

Item the third: Sometimes all I really want to do is knit lace:

And sometimes I just want to sit on the sofa and read for the day (no photos of that one!) Trying to force myself to do anything else is an exercise in frustration.

It seems that the knitting blog world has been undergoing some changes of late, and this blog is no exception. I recently went through my subscriptions on Google Reader, culling those that haven’t posted in more than a year. There were many, pretty much all knitting blogs. My subscriptions are now for more than just knitting blogs, but they’re all pretty much light reading since I do most of my blog reading over breakfast. There are some related to work, but not many. Why the change? Most people would say Ravelry has taken the place of their blog for most things, and I’d tend to agree. Where four years ago most of my knitting posts were of the type “here’s my project, here’s the pattern and yarn, and here are my modifications” all of this is now in my Ravelry notebook. But that doesn’t really tell the whole story. Now even updating my Rav notebook is somewhat haphazard. I can’t count the number of small things I’ve knitted and given away that don’t have photos. There are three pairs of French Press slippers (not counting the pair that didn’t felt), numerous pairs of socks that haven’t quite been immortalised (including the Boy’s birthday and Christmas socks, and several pairs of plain old boring socks for me), and a shawl that I took a couple of in progress and finished photos of, but never got around to uploading. There are a couple (or more) works in progress that haven’t been recorded either.

I wonder why? It’s not like I don’t knit any more, and I don’t think my output is really any slower than it was a few years ago. Perhaps it’s just settled into being the thing that I do, rather than the thing that I talk about all the time. Perhaps I’m just over taking photos constantly. Perhaps I’m pretty sure no-one cares all that much any more! Maybe the organisation of the stash into projects at the beginning of the year had more of an effect on me than I realised. I don’t think I need more works in progress (currently I have a cardigan, some mittens, a shawl and a few more rows on the collar of Featherweight. We’re not talking about the little lace squares for Celadon or the machine-knit vest I really need to get around to sewing up). It’s not that I don’t like working on the stuff that I have in progress (well, Featherweight was a bit of a slog…). Maybe I’m missing the acquiring part of the hobby. There’s no point browsing new patterns or looking at yarn if you know that you have enough of both to keep you busy for the next year.

What’s the solution? Well first, is it really a problem? I don’t think so. I do like the comments and hearts (the Rav equivalent of the Facebook “Like”), but do I like them enough to spend valuable knitting time taking arty photos and uploading them and keeping track of my progress? Probably not. So, until I muster up some enthusiasm for recording all my output again, what happens to the blog? I don’t think anything is going to change. There will continue to be months of silence, followed by a couple of posts in quick succession when the mood strikes. The webring thing seems to have faded too, so there’s nothing forcing me to come up with something once a month. I promise not to fade away entirely, but I can’t promise any kind of regularity, consistency of topic or increased frequency. I do rather enjoy reading my old posts, so at least they’ll be interesting for me. Meanwhile, you’ll find me on the forums on Ravelry and very occasionally on Facebook. Definitely no Twitter. Not now, not ever.

Two years ago we had returned from our honeymoon and the Boy was suddenly plunged into a period of unemployment (thanks GFC). Partly to keep him occupied, he agreed to make a book cabinet for the jeweller who made our rings who wanted to learn woodworking at the same time. There was discussion about design, wood was purchased and the kitchen/hallway was filled with wood. She would come over once a week to participate in the build, learning as they went. The wood was not the easiest of woods to work with, throwing up all sorts of issues from tool-blunting to tear-out (yes, all technical wood working terms – I do pay attention!). Slowly the cabinet was formed and I came home one day about a year ago to find it all in one piece. Amazing! Finishing surely couldn’t be too far away? Well, you wouldn’t think so, but the Boy’s perfectionist tendencies came to the fore. He wanted a perfect French Polish finish, and would stop at nothing to get it.

Months passed. The weather didn’t co-operate. Apparently French polishing is quite fussy when it comes to temperature and humidity and the perfect combination of the two happens about twice a year in Sydney. The sides and doors were done, but the top of the cabinet wasn’t playing nicely. It was patchy, and certainly not as beautiful as the sides, or what it should be. So, one fateful day in Bunnings we were looking for mineral oil to mix with the shellac (for some reason, can’t really remember), and we found rub-on polyurethane. This isn’t the regular Estapol brush-on stuff that you use to finish floors. No, this was finer, nicer to apply, didn’t give a plastic-y look when it was done. And above all, it wasn’t so bloody fussy about the weather. A discussion between the builder and the future owner ensued, and it was decided that the whole French polish idea should be abandoned and wipe-on poly would be the finish of choice from now on.

Phew! The existing finish was removed in a little over an hour (along with much complaining about “all that work going to waste”), and the wipe-on poly process commenced. Success! It wasn’t (apparently) as nice as a good French polish would have been, but honestly, who cares? It worked! It looked great! A week later we were ready to fit the doors. It seemed somewhat surreal to be at this point after two years of having a half-finished book cabinet in the hallway.

Meridee, the future owner, arrived bright and early one Saturday morning. I hadn’t really expected the thing to be finished in a day, but I wasn’t saying anything and the Boy didn’t want to jinx anything by suggesting the possibility. It was a hot and humid day and there was a lot of work still to be done. Buffing and applying a final coat of wax to all the surfaces took most of the morning. Then it was time to fit the glass in the doors which went without a hitch. No broken panes *and* no cut fingers! Then time to fit the doors themselves. There was about two hours to go before the usual pack-up time so it was pushing it a bit, but, thanks to a super-human effort from the builder and future owner, all doors were fitted and handles (made by Meridee) were fitted. I knitted a sock and observed with mounting anticipation. The last handle was screwed in and I was pressed into service to flip the cabinet back onto it’s base. Then, it all came together. Amazing! The doors just fitted. The handles were perfect. The finish lit up the wood. The sense of relief was palpable. Meridee was thrilled. I was sent to the shops to procure celebratory bubbles which were shared between the three of us.

Movers were arranged with haste, and Meridee arrived one night the next week to assist with the mummification of the object:

Movers arrived right on time the next morning and a few hours later it was installed in it’s new home. We went for a viewing and it’s perfect:

Ah, finished! The Boy has a very long list of future projects, but for now he’s recovering and basking in the glory of having something finished.

I don’t make New Year’s resolutions much. Occasionally there’s the vague “lose weight, save money” thought, but nothing particularly formal. This year, instead of making resolutions and never doing anything about them, I’ve decided to enact a plan instead. Or, to be more accurate, several plans.

On the “save money” front, I’ve started using some budgeting software (iBank for the Mac) in an attempt to track where our money goes. Not sure if I really like it yet, but I’ve got another 20-something days before the free rial runs out to get used to it. We’re enacting the “only spend from the cash we get at the beginning of the week” thing that worked quite well in the past, and hopefully we’ll be back on track before we know it. We both like spending money more than is good for us….

On the “lose weight” front, I’ve rejoined Weight Watchers (for those that are counting, that would make 5 times in total – I got to goal on attempt 3, attempt 4 was when we returned from the honeymoon and I lost a bit, but not back down to goal). 10kg to lose (argh! How did it get to be so much????!!). I’m rather liking the Point-free fruit thing, and I have high hopes that this will work. Weight Watchers by itself doesn’t work without a bit more effort and planning though, so I’ve decided to properly embrace the bento lunch. I’ve been making Japanese-inspired bento lunches for a little while now, on and off, generally using recipes from the Just Bento book (highly recommended). I bought myself a proper bento box in Hawaii last year and have enjoyed using it when I get organised enough.

So, every weekend, I’m going to make a plan for lunches for the week, buy ingredients, pre-make what I can the night before, and enjoy eating tasty food that’s good for me at lunch. And, for the past week and a bit it seems to be working. You can tell I’m getting a bit obsessed though, because I’ve started to become one of those people who take photos of their food. Here are some lunches from the past few days:

(each photo links to Flickr, where I’ve added notes about the different items.)

The first two use the box I bought in Hawaii, the third is a new box that arrived on Friday. Will plastic containers become my new stash? Don’t know, but I do know that I look forward to lunch time every day!

Why is it that sometimes knitting seems to equal work? I decided that this year would be a good year to knit from stash. I seem to have enough projects to keep me busy and I’d really like to get to some of my more … interesting balls that have been marinating at the bottom of the stash for some time. To this end, I went through the storage tubs that contain the full balls (rather than the ones that contain partial balls, leftovers and other oddments – they’re exempt from this “knit up the stash” kick), assigned patterns to each ball or set of balls and put the wool and pattern (or a note saying *which* pattern) into a large ziplock bag to keep everything together. Then, when it’s time for me to start a new project I can just go pick one out of the queue. Easy, right? I thought so. I have about 10 projects in the queue, some are big, some are small, and there’s enough variety in there to keep me happy for most of the year.

Proud of myself I thought, huh, I should go join one of those “stash down” groups – the ones that support you through the whole “don’t buy anything, use what you have” process. Not that I really need persuading not to buy stuff – I’m generally pretty good at only buying wool when I have a project in mind for it (when I don’t it’s generally disastrous), but I thought that a little community would be fun and they might have some better ideas for storage, organisation and so on.

I seem to have been mistaken. Firstly, my stash seems positively puny in comparison to some. Enough wool for 20 jumpers? 100 pairs of socks? Are you kidding me? How do you get to that point? Secondly, there seems to be a lot of work involved. Keeping track of the number of balls you’ve knitted so you can put them into an online tracker, updating the group every day that you *haven’t* bought wool, aiming to knit a certain amount for the year. Why does all of that just seem like too much? I’m in this for the fun! Sure, I enter the Easter Show for the competition, but that’s not about quantity, that’s quality. I’m not sure that I really get the knitting just for the sake of knitting to use stuff up. I’d rather knit slower and get something that I really like at the end.

So, is this “stash down” thing really for me? Well, it does make me feel somewhat virtuous about having such a “small” stash, But apart from that, I feel like this is all a bit out of my league. I might just work on this by myself for the time being.

Or perhaps I’m just bitter because both my current projects are using Wollmeise laceweight with 300g balls…..

It’s spring, so obviously it’s time for a garden post. It’s been a relatively cold, wet spring so far, so there hasn’t been a huge amount of planting. The biggest advance in the veggie patch is the the addition of some wooden edging around the garden, making containing the veggies and keeping the edges neat much easier. So far we only have tomatoes, corn and some lettuce in:

Umm…. What was that? That’s a finished object from the Boy. Yes, it turns out he really can crochet, and he can even adapt a pattern. That’s a one-up mushroom from Mario, adapted from a variety of patterns when he couldn’t get a single pattern to work out the way he wanted it to. So far he’s just sticking to toys, and has made a pacman, half a Shawn the sheep, a dragon body and another yellow blob that I can’t identify. He’s having a good time, and seems to have more works in progress than I do!

Nothing else particularly exciting is happening around here. We are looking forward to summer, warm weather and Christmas holidays. Christmas tea cups have been purchased and put away again, not to be brought out until the tree is up. Plans are being made for the purchasing of a small, light TV to enable cricket watching outside. Messiah rehearsals start in a fortnight. Ah, summer at last!