Tea and Cakes

Happy winter solstice everyone!

Today I baked a toffee apple cake (from Cornflower’s recipe), then had friends round for said cake, plus tea and presents. Lovely presents. A great knitting book and a lovely box from lush.

I’ve been knitting too, but I can’t show you any of it :-(.

I’m re-reading the Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde, and I don’t seem to be able to get anything else done apart from reading in my spare time.

So, I’m just going to go with it, I’m off for a hot bath with a sparkly bath bomb and a good book. It seems like the best way to spend the darkest day of the year.

A couple of months ago, Cheryl asks me: “Hey, fancy going to Edinburgh for the day?”

Well, there’s only one answer to that question, so I got up at 4am on Tuesday to make the 6.30 flight, and by 8am we were on the airport bus watching a beautiful sunrise over the city.

Our first stop, at an hour that really was too early to expect such wonderful hospitality, was with Karen from Cornflower. Karen welcomed us into her lovely home with tea and a delicious passionfruit cake that was light a creamy and sweet and mmmmmmm. (and some lovely Scottish angora yarn that’s deciding what it would like to be). I’ve been reading the Cornflower blog for a little while now, and I suspect that some of my reading material for 2009 will be based on recommendations from there. Thank you so much for having us to visit Karen, it was lovely to meet you.

Delicious treats chez Cornflower

Our next stop was a short bus ride across the city. Ok, It was walkable sort of, but we had bus tickets, and a long day planned, and the bus went right where we needed it to. So. Justification over. Our next stop: Fidra Books. Oh boy, am I glad I don’t live near here, I don’t think they’d ever get rid of me. Ostensibly a children’s bookshop, Fidra also has a small but extremely well selected (to my mind) choice of adult books books for adults too. The shop was welcoming and friendly, and Vanessa, Malcolm and Teaga all lovely. Teaga (the dog) is quite big, so I think they would have noticed if I’d tried to sneak her home with me, but I was very tempted.

Fidra also have a publishing arm, for classic children’s books. The editions are lovely, and if you’re a fan of classic children’s adventure stories or books about ponies do check them out. They also have the later books in the Trebizon series, that I didn’t know existed. I may need to see if my local library has the earlier ones, as I haven’t read them since I was a child.

Lovely Fidra Books editions

Now, when we’d arrived in Edinburgh, the very helpful lady at the information desk told us about a German christmas market and a highland market that were on in the city. These were down by the Scott memorial, and also featured a ferris wheel. Hmmmm, is all I have to say about that.

The market was, well, small. A couple of stands, some hot wine or sausages, and that was the German market. The Highland market was pretty similar – tablet, fudge, or hats knit in Nepal with the Scottish flag on them. Oh, and crepes. Meh. It was raining at this point anyway, so we didn’t linger, and instead visited the National Gallery of Scotland for art and lunch. There are some fabulous pieces there. I especially liked the fact that their famous painting of the ice-skating preacher, The Reverend Robert Walker Skating on Duddingston Loch, by Sir Henry Raeburn, might not have actually been painted by Raeburn, was probably painted ten years after they thought, and doesn’t seem to be of Duddingston Loch.

Anyway, refreshed from our lunch and culture, we ventured up many steps…

…and down more, to K1 Yarns, which is a lovely and friendly shop with a small but nice selection of yarns. I’d imagine it’s a lovely place to hang out and knit.

K1 Yarns

By this time it was about 3.30, and we were flagging a little. Coffee, shortbread and knitting were required, and we spent a very pleasant hour in Always Sunday, a bright and comfortable cafe on the Royal Mile.

Chocolate chip shortbread and a cappucino

A very small shop later, and a stroll along Princes Street, and we were ready for home.

A very quick photo of the castle in the dark

I fell in to bed back in Dublin at about 11.30pm, very tired, but very happy.

Most of my knitting at the moment is for presents, so I can’t blog about it, but a little while ago I ended up in a bit of a hat phase.

I left my favourite warm hat in a taxi, and needed another. I’d been ashamed for a while that the hat I wore was store bought, and I really had no excuse for that.

So, I cast on for the Amelia Earhart Aviators Cap. It was fun to knit, quick and interesting, and the Rowan Wool Cotton gave good stitch definition.

There was a problem though. It just didn’t suit me.

So, with the weather getting colder by the day, I grabbed some wool/alpaca from the stash and some needles, and knocked this one up:

I love it. It’s cute and it’s cosy and warm. It’s my Pikmin hat, after the Gamecube game of a few years ago. Just missing the leaf.

This was leading up to halloween, and also to the first birthday of a friend’s daughter. I just had an urge that wouldn’t go away to make a pumpkin hat, and This is Knit had the perfect shades of the lovely Debbie Bliss Rialto 4 ply in stock. It just had to be.

There are plenty of patterns out there, but I just made it up as I went along, and it ended up looking exactly like the picture in my head, which was nice.

In case the hats for Innocent smoothie bottles, 2 hats for me and one to give away weren’t enough, I did make another hat around this time. A hat that’s taunting me regularly now, and keeps on giving me a very good lesson. But that’s for another post.

I know, it’s been a while. Everything sort of exploded and a few things had to be put on hold to ensure my general sanity and well being, and blogging was one of them. Everything’s good, it just got a little busy there.

So. I return with the very exciting news that Revels have temporarily got rid of the coffee ones, and have introduced a new mystery sweet. I have a packet here with me now and I’m blogging as I eat them.

If you’re not familiar with Revels, they’re a sort of mini selection of chocolates. There are chocolate covered raisins, toffees, maltesers, chocolate discs, orange cremes and coffee cremes. It’s fairly obvious which are the raisins and chocolate discs, and the malteser ones are slightly bigger than the rest, but you should pretend that you don’t know what you’re getting each time.

I may be an anomoly, but I like the coffee revels. We used to have a rule that if you were sharing a pack, at the cinema for example, if someone took a sweet and got a coffee one they could take another one too. This worked out very well for me.

Before I start I would like to state for the record that I have not been researching this matter, and I have no prior knowledge of the new sweet, but I’m guessing that it’s a strawberry creme.

Anyway, onwards:

First sweet… raisin. I played it safe. Mmmm.

Sip of coffee.

Second sweet… orange. Oh yum.

Sip of coffee.

Third sweet. Going for one of creme ones again… Ewwww! Ewwww! I was right, it’s strawberry. Oh yuk, that’s really nasty. Sweet and artificial tasting. Eww ewww eww. Quick! raisin one again.

Lesson learned. No more Revels until this stupid experiment of theirs is over.

Thank you America xx

Now. A question was posed to me the other day, and I’ve been pondering it since then.

If you were to put forward a song for a mix-cd (oh! how times have changed, no more tapes) to represent you, what would it be?

It has me stumped. What’s my favourite song? It changes all the time.

Do I go for something by The Cardigans, one of my all-time favourite bands? And if so, which song? The sweet poppy Gordon’s Gardenparty that I loved when I was 17, or a the more recent I Need Some Fine Wine and You Need to be Nicer?

Or another all-time favourite band, Belle and Sebastian? And again, which song? If I can’t even narrow it down to one or two here, how could I just pick one to represent me totally? If I pick Beautiful will people think that I think of myself as beautiful only slightly mental? Do I? Is that vain? How about The Boy with the Arab Strap? Too predictable? Le Pastie de la Bourgeoisie because it always makes me dance oddly in my car?

Then what about Nick Drake for songs that always move me? Magic? River Man? Too depressing for a compilation? Would I bring everyone’s mood down?

How about Janis Joplin with Son of a Preacherman? It’s a classic. You Can’t Hurry Love by The Supremes? Wives and Lovers by Jack Jones (written by the legendary Hal David and Burt Bacharach) for the sheer hilarity and irony?

There are too many possibilities: Bic Runga, Stellar, Nirvana, The Carpenters, The Bee Gees (laugh if you like, but just try and walk down the street listening to Saturday Night Fever without strutting), Blur, The Kinks, Beth Orton. Ack. Too many. (Also, you may notice that on the whole I stopped buying new music a while ago.)

So, I put the question out there: One song, to represent you. What would it be?

The lovely Jackie, who blogs at Jiki Knits has nominated me for an “I love your blog award”.

I’m genuinely honored by this, thank you Jackie. It’s lovely to be appreciated, especially at a time when I don’t feel that I have much of interest to say.

I am however, going to break with the rules and not pass it on. There are simply too many people I could nominate and I don’t want to have to pick four.

Ahh, back to Saturday knitting. It’s great. The cafe we meet in has great coffee from Ariosa, a small Irish company, wonderful sandwiches, and fantastic cakes from The Cake Cafe. I had a piece of delicious moist gingerbread. I adore ginger. I’ve been looking for a good parkin recipe for ages, if anyone knows of one please let me know. Bonus points if it’s vegan so I don’t need to buy eggs.

We were a small group this week, but were joined by four lovely new people, which is great. Afterwards we all went our separate ways but all ended up in the new This is Knit in the Powerscourt Townhouse. I think this could become a habit. I failed miserably in my working through my stash plan. I managed so well at the launch party on Friday night, but a project idea’s been niggling at me, and the perfect yarn presented itself, so I couldn’t resist and have cast on.

The hats I was working on yesterday are for Innocent Smoothie bottles. For their Big Knit campaign, for every little hat knit €1 will go to Age Action Ireland. I have 8 made so far, but I’m taking a tiny break for a couple of days. The hats are really quick to knit up though, and the perfect opportunity for a little sampler of stranded knitting, which I’ve been meaning to try for a while. The sweater I want to cast on for next is a lot more complicated than a tiny hat, but it’s a start, and I have another intermediate project in mind for some extra practice before I get to the complicated yoke of the sweater. (Plus, you know, I also need to swatch and start the project, I’m getting a little bit ahead of myself).

(The innocent smoothie bottle above can be seen modeling this season’s latest style: Fair Isle in the Galway colours)

It’s been a lovely crisp autumn day today: clear and cold. I’m on the bus on my way to town to visit the This Is Knit opening party and then see friends, and I’m very excited about it all.
I have on my newly finished clapotis, my jaywalker socks, and my old voodoo wristwarmers, which are looking a little the worse for wear and need replacing. (I have a plan for that though. It’s been cooking away today.) The point is, I’m nicely wrapped in wool.
What I’m missing is a hand knit hat. I left my old (shop bought) hat in a taxi before what passed for a summer here, and my other hat was knit 8 years ago, and is for emergencies only. So, I’d better get on to that too.
I love this weather. There’s a nice chill to the air, but it’s not that cold, and most importantly it’s sunny. Give me cold and sunny over grey and raining any day.

—- ?Sent using a Sony Ericsson mobile phone

That’s what I’ve been doing recently. Lurking around the internets, reading but not participating.

I’m utterly fascinated by the US election, so I’ve been spending a lot of time hitting F5 on various news sites.

I’m also unbelievably annoyed by the Irish government and their bank bail out but even though in my head I’ve started many posts about this I have too much rage to be coherent.

I spent a day watching season 5 of The Wire. I’m not going to discuss it on blog in case of spoilers. I will just say that the people I know who have this should watch it please so I can talk about it.

Tonight I dyed my hair brown. My hair’s already brown. This is a tiny bit darker. It’s still wet, but I’m happy enough. It’s come to something when the highlight of your week is dyeing your hair the same colour that it is usually.