Category Archives: Entry

It’s probably a bad thing to be this proud of yourself

Posted on by
5

but look at my table!

I’m so pleased with how it turned out!  It still needs to be varnished (probably not this weekend, because it’s raining so I can’t do it outside, and I don’t feel like stinking out the house with polyurethane), and like the other one, I need to figure out something for the base, but it looks so good, and exactly how I envisioned it.  I keep walking past it and smiling :-)   I just hope we have a dry weekend sometime soon so I can get it finished, and start actually using it!

In other news, I’m getting a visitor tonight – Fuzzle is coming down for a few days.  I haven’t seen her for ages, and because she lives off the grid our only communication is via extremely rare texts when she can get her phone charged, so I’m so looking forward to seeing her again and having a proper catch up.

Of course, that means I should be cleaning the house and cooking and all those other things you do for impending visitors.  So I’ve so far spent the morning sewing :-)

I finished my paper piecing square though:

It’s not perfectly aligned, but I’m pretty happy with it for a first try.  Now I’ve just got to decide what I’m going to turn it into (only another 20-odd and I could make a quilt… yeah, probably not.  I think it’ll end up as a cushion).

The almost alignment of the cats was completely accidental, by the way – I just cut the two pieces of fabric so that a cat was roughly centred in each – I didn’t realise when I sewed them together they’d match up like that!

Of course, being me, now that I’ve learnt the basics of a new skill, I want to jump straight into the deep end with it.  Tartankiwi has a few other patterns on her blog, and one of them struck me as having the potential to be turned into a present for someone, so I’m going to give it a go.  It’s a wee bit more complicated than the heart pattern, though.

This is the pattern for the heart:

and this is the pattern for my new project:

Over-ambitious? Moi???

Beautiful things

Posted on by
4

Look what was waiting for me in my letterbox when I got home tonight:

 

Yep, the wonderful Yetzirah sent me a copy of her watercolour cat! And a bonus little bird! Thanks Yetzirah – they’re just as gorgeous in person as they were on the screen. I’ll have to go in search of a suitable frame at the weekend – they’re definitely going on my wall of art.

And talking of pretty things, lookit what I made myself last night:

There’s a new craft shop in Church Corner (with attached cafe – perfect!) which offers classes, and they’re are almost all in the evenings or weekends, so I can actually go to some of them (unlike the classes at Hands, which all seem to be held during the day on weekdays – I suspect their proximity to Merivale means they cater mostly to the ‘ladies who lunch’ types who don’t have to do anything as menial as work).

So last night I went to a class on making a charm bracelet, and the above prettiness was the result.  It was a really fun class, too – there were only three of us enrolled, so we all just sat round a small table with the tutor.  And although she’d made up little kits with the components we needed to make the bracelet, she had a huge collection of other beads and charms with her, and let us swap out anything from our kits so we could create exactly the bracelet we wanted. So we all ended up with completely different bracelets despite starting from the same basic components.  Don’t know if I’ll ever take up jewellery making as a hobby (it looks like it could get very expensive fast, plus there’s the whole too many hobbies already thing), but it was fun giving it a go.

Oh, and tea and cake was included in the price of the class, so it was all very civilised!

Wet stuff falling from the sky

Posted on by
1

I think our drought has officially broken.  After a long dry summer when we’d all forgotten what rain is, two days of pouring rain (with several more to come, by the look of it) have reminded us.  It’s a bit of a shock, suddenly being all cold and miserable like this – I’m definitely not ready for winter yet!

Neither is the house, it seems.  I discovered yesterday that although I’d diligently cleared the gutters ready for winter, it was completely in vain, because some thirsty plant has grown its roots down the drain the downspout empties into, totally blocking the drain and the downspout.  So although the gutter is beautifully clear, the water can’t get out of it, so it’s backing up and some has flowed into the ceiling, producing a lovely wee leak in the corner of the sunroom.  Yay.

My attempts to clear the drain have been completely unsuccessful, so it looks like I’m going to have to call a professional of some sort tomorrow morning.  Wonder how much that will cost me?  And then of course I’ll have to see how much damage it’s done to the ceiling – hopefully it won’t be *too* bad, because it’s only a tiny drip coming through – most of the water luckily is flowing over the outside edge of the gutter rather than the inside edge, so it looks like not that much is getting into the ceiling (though of course any at all is a bad thing).

Apart from the leak (and clambering around on the roof in the rain making sure it wasn’t a broken tile causing it), I had a great day yesterday.  Jenny and I had been talking about an expedition to Hands for ages – she because she’d never been, and I because I had a voucher from Lytteltonwitch burning a hole in my pocket – so we finally got round to it yesterday.  We went for lunch first at a cafe nearby (which had an open fire – perfect in this weather!), and then spent a very pleasant hour or so wandering around Hands.  I ended up buying some materials for an experimental project I’ve got in mind – might try and make a start on it next weekend, in which case there’ll be some work in progress pictures coming soon (unless it all goes horribly wrong, of course – like I said, it’s a bit experimental… it’s something I’ve read about that I know is technically possible, but I’ve never actually tried it, and I’m a little vague on the details…)

Afterwards we went back to Jenny’s place out in Sumner to visit the tiny kittens she’s fostering for Cat Rescue.  They’re very young (about a month old, I think?), and still a bit unsteady on their feet, and incredibly cute – little bundles of fluffy silver tabbyness.  At one point I ended up with all four of them piled up on my lap, tangled up together in one big ball of fluff and all purring incredibly loudly.  I was sooooo tempted to sneak one into my pocket and take it home, but I don’t think Parsnips and Pushkin would have appreciated it (besides, I’m already breaking the “don’t have more cats than you have laps” rule with two of them!).

Later we got takeaways for dinner and watched Forgotten Silver (Peter Jackson’s hoax documentary, which I’d never seen because it aired when I was living in the UK).  Jenny and MrJenny are both very knowledgeable about cinema history, so it was really interesting watching it with them – they saw a lot that I completely missed (and vice versa – there was a lot of NZ stuff that they were oblivious to, having only been here a few years).  Really cool film, anyway, and I could see why so many people were taken in by it – he was very clever in the way he made it just plausible enough and intermingled the hoax with a lot of genuine history and local legend to create a story that it was guaranteed people would want to believe.  Of course, knowing in advance it was a hoax I was easily able to spot the clues he’d put in (the frequent references to bulls (as in, a load of…) for a start), but I think if I’d seen it when it first screened I would have been totally fooled.

Cobblers

Posted on by
5

Mojosmom’s suggestion of a peach cobbler sent me off to Google.  I’d only ever encountered cobblers in fiction, but Google quickly turned up a plethora of recipes, all completely different.  In the end I found one that seemed to resemble what she’d described, so (after a bit of tweaking to adapt it to metric measurements, halve the size (the original recipe served 8!!!) and replace the self-raising flour (which I hate the taste of so always use real flour plus baking powder instead)) I gave it a go.  The ingredient list is pretty similar to the muffins, actually:

2-3 cups sliced peaches
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup water
50g butter
3/4 cup flour
1 1/4 tsp baking powder
3/4 cup milk
cinnamon

Make up a syrup with the water and half the sugar, and boil the peaches in it for 10 minutes. Mix flour, baking powder, remaining sugar, and milk to make a thin batter. Melt butter in a baking dish, and pour the batter over the top, without mixing. Spoon fruit and syrup over the top, then sprinkle with cinnamon. Bake 180C for 25-30 minutes.

The batter rises up around the fruit, and you end up with a sweet, slightly chewy, doughy fruity mixture. Delicious, but very heavy – I had to share it with friends to be able to get through it all.

I’m having a very enjoyable long Easter weekend so far. On Friday Harvestbird and I went to see a Chilean film at Alice’s, preceded by a walk through the wide open spaces of the ex-CBD. After the movie we went for a very late lunch, sitting outside in the sun and discussing literary theory and the application of narrative to everyday life – a very pleasant afternoon, and it gave me some very helpful new ways to look at the world.

Then on Saturday night I went out for dinner with Jenny and MrJenny – another lovely meal and great conversation. They’re off on holiday to Dunedin this week, so I was sharing my (rather out of date) local knowledge of the best things to do and see (I made sure to direct them to the beach where Skyring nearly tripped over a seal, so they can have their own wildlife close encounter).

Yesterday it was bottling day. Despite my best efforts at muffins and cobblers and eating a huge amount fresh, I still had a large pile of fruit left.

So I set to work making nectarine chutney.

That only used up half the fruit though. I thought about making a second batch, but I didn’t have enough of the other ingredients left, and it being Easter Sunday, the supermarket would have been closed. So I decided to be very brave and attempt some bottling.

I used to help Mum and Dad with bottling fruit all the time when I was a kid, but generally only with the preparing the fruit part – once it got to boiling hot sugar syrup being poured around, I kept out of the way. And my memories of it being a very arcane and esoteric process meant I never tried it for myself as an adult. But here I was with a pile of fruit and plenty of jars and lids I’d already sterilised. So there was only one thing for it – consult the trusty Edmonds book, turn my big stock pot into a water bath, and dive in (metaphorically, that is – literally diving into the stock pot would have been quite painful… and a bit difficult, seeing as it’s only big enough for my head).

Not many photos this time – there was way too much sugar syrup getting spilt around the kitchen for me to want my camera anywhere near!

End result, 11 jars of chutney, and 10 of bottled peaches and nectarines (and only 3 jars that failed to seal, which I’ll have to use up first). That should keep me going for the winter!

The long weekend was rounded off quite nicely (though it’s not actually over yet for me – I’ve got tomorrow off as well) by breakfast with Dad and Stepmother, who were on their way back from Australia. They were staying at a motel just up the road, so we went to a nearby cafe for breakfast, then they dropped me off in Riccarton on their way out of town. After a quick dash into the mall to get a couple of things, I headed to Deans Bush to play with my camera in the gardens.

A decade of bookcrossing

Posted on by
2

It’s my 10th anniversary as a bookcrosser today.  Strange to think I’ve been doing it for so long, although given how much I’ve done over the past 10 years (travelling all around the world, organising conventions, meeting all sorts of weird and wonderful people) 10 years doesn’t actually seem long enough to fit it all in.

I celebrated my decade in the obvious way, by releasing lots of books (though I had to make a quick dash to a second-hand bookshop at lunchtime, because I wanted to release 10 cat-themed books, but could only find 5 in my stash this morning).  My final release list for the day was:

  1. The Time-Travelling Cat and the Egyptian Goddess by Julia Jarman
  2. Kissed by Cat by Shirley Jump
  3. Cats by Peggy Wratten
  4. Cat Dependent No More by Jeff Reid
  5. Know Your Cat’s Purr Points by Margaret Woodhouse
  6. Catwatching by Desmond Morris
  7. Catlore by Desmond Morris
  8. The Cat’s Fancy by Julie Kenner
  9. Magnifi-Cat by Bruce Angrave
  10. The Cats of Seroster by Robert Westall

Vote for me!

Posted on by
1

Or rather, vote for my team, who have been nominated in the 2012 Digital Humanities Awards http://DHawards.org/DHawards2012/voting.  We’ve been nominated in the “Best DH project for public audiences” category, for our CEISMIC digital archive.

Actually, I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned CEISMIC on here, have I?  That’s where I’ve been working for the last couple of years, helping build a massive archive of material related to the Christchurch earthquakes – we’re trying to collect everything from people’s stories to government soil reports to news footage to historic images of demolished buildings to the tweets people sent.  It’s a fantastic job, building something that will be of immense value to future researchers, and really fascinating work, although sometimes it’s a bit depressing when I have to spend my days immersed in images of destruction – a bit hard to move on from memories of the earthquakes when you’re surrounded by them all day!  Anyway, check out http://www.ceismic.org.nz and https://quakestudies.canterbury.ac.nz to see what we’ve been up to (QuakeStudies is the research arm of CEISMIC, and the area I spend most of my time working on).

Mysterious marmite

Posted on by
4

A mysterious gift of marmite just appeared in our hallway (at least, I assume it just arrived – I’m pretty certain it wasn’t there last time I walked past).  Neither of us heard it arrive, but it’s a lovely day so the front door is wide open, so whoever it was obviously just popped it inside in without knocking.

.

I’ve got no idea who was the mysterious donor (I’ve complained to a *lot* of people about the marmite drought), but the Elmo lunch bag narrows it down a bit.  MrPloppy reckons it was Tam, who would be likely to just drop it and run without announcing her presence, but Rarsberry also mentioned a while back that she had some unwanted marmite lurking in her cupboard, so maybe it was her.

Anyway, whoever it was, if you’re reading this, thank you!

Hmm, it’s nearly lunchtime – I think I will indulge in a lovely cheese and marmite sandwich…

Busy doing nothing

Posted on by
4

Time is rapidly running out on my holidays, but I’m kind of looking forward to going back to work – this year is going to be full of all sorts of interesting challenges which I want to get stuck into.  I could very easily get used to this leisurely lifestyle though :-)

Not that the last few days have been that leisurely – we decided it was finally time to face down the monster that is cleaning the garage.  As you may know, we don’t own a car.  Our garage then, not needing a vehicular space to be kept clear, has become the all purpose storage space for things that might come in handy one day, broken stuff that might be repairable so it seems silly to throw it out, useful boxes, leftover building material from various projects, furniture I’ve been meaning to Freecycle, stuff the previous owners left behind… you get the idea.  Plus it doubles as a wood shed, and houses the usual tools and stuff of any garage.  Yeah, basically a room-sized junk drawer.

It was getting to the stage where we couldn’t actually find any of the tools, and getting to the woodpile in winter was work for a skilled mountaineer (ok, so maybe not that bad, but it was a bit tricky squeezing past the lawnmower).  So all year I’ve been saying that when we had a few free days we should clean it out.

So having quite a few free days, with no excuses left, we finally tackled the job.  We hired a skip and filled it with everything of the “might come in handy some day”, “don’t even know what this is” and “outright rubbish” categories, restacked the wood pile to limit its gradual spread across the floor, sorted out the Freecyclables ready to post offers, cleaned and organised everything that was left, and we now have a perfectly usable garage.

Yeah, I give it about a month before it’s back to chaos again, but in the meantime I can feel proud of our efforts :-)

Progress hasn’t been as steady on craft projects, but that’s because it’s been so hot – it’s hovered around 30o most days this month, accompanied by Christchurch’s famous hot and dusty nor’wester.  And hot and sweaty really doesn’t go well with keeping crafty things clean.

But yesterday the weather finally broke and it rained and was nice and cool.  Which coincided nicely with Jenny having a free day, so she came round and we had a sewing circle – or sewing line, really – it’s hard to have a circle of two… and actually it was more of a knitting and embroidery line – she was finishing off a jersey she’s knitting, and I was working on my cross-stitch. But we called it a sewing circle anyway ;-) and it accomplished the same goal: company and conversation while working on crafty things.

So I did make a small amount of progress:

160113embr

And I have added a bit more to my knitting experiment.  I’ve just been playing with different patterns and using up some of the random odds and ends of wool Jenny gave me, and just picking up stitches off the sides of existing squares to start each new one, so it’s developing very organically*.

.

*Translation: messily

In bookcrossing news, I got a catch which was definitely a record for me, and may even (according to Gorydetails) be a site-wide record, for longest time between release and catch.  I released Ossian’s Ride in April 2003, and it’s finally been caught almost 10 years later.  Just goes to show you should never give up on a book!

Other, less notable, recent catches:

Currently reading:

  • Napoleon’s Buttons by Penny Le Couteur and Jay Burreson
  • Monkey Mind: A Memoir of Anxiety by Daniel B Smith (audiobook)