Tonsils

What was a mildly sore throat on Monday - hardly noticeable - became a really quite sore throat (and swollen tonsils) by Tuesday evening, and this morning when I got up, it really hurt to swallow and my sinuses had decided to join in. So I admitted defeat, called in sick and went back to bed, where I had a rather feverish type of dream in which I dreamt that my feet had developed several extra toes without my noticing.

This is definitely not true - I checked - but for a few moments after I woke up I really thought it was. It must be Weird Dream Week in my family (my grandmother has apparently been having dreams in which she worries about the end of the world and mountains turning into volcanoes).

I hope I'm going to feel better soon because I keep thinking about all the things I need to do at work...

Turmoil

April has been a pretty rough month. I have been putting off posting until things evened out a bit, because I don't like to write a big dollop of self-pity - especially when so many other people are going through trying times as well...

At the start of April, J's grandfather died. He had been unwell a few times recently, but had only just been told that he couldn't go on living alone because of his Parkinson's. He'd agreed to this, then took ill, was taken to hospital and died a couple of days afterwards.

So the news wasn't totally unexpected, but we hadn't realised he was as ill as that (I'm not sure if anyone did). We have been bearing in mind that this was a reasonably merciful way to go - Gramps really didn't want to move out of his house, and in the event he didn't have to, and he wasn't confused or demented and he didn't linger on suffering. But it's still sad.

We went down for the funeral and spent some time with J's family, who are, as ever, lovely.

That was the first week of April. About a week after we got back, we noticed that Pumpkin, one of our guinea pigs, was making a noise and looking uncomfortable when urinating. J had noticed this a few weeks earlier, but I hadn't been able to catch her in the act and was rather inclined to put it down to his OCD - he does get very worried about things, often without much cause.

However, we could now clearly see that Pumpkin was in pain, and thought it was likely to be bladder stones, which are common in guinea pigs. They're caused by a diet too high in calcium, which some guinea pigs have difficulty excreting (it's genetically linked). The stones can be fatal - two friends of mine have recently lost guinea pigs to them. We took Pumpkin to the vet, who thought this was a likely diagnosis and admitted her for ultrasound scanning to confirm it, then possibly surgery to remove the stones. Pumpkin is a little tiny thing, so we were quite upset at this prospect; but the alternative would be putting her down, which we couldn't bring ourselves to face.

We returned home. That evening, Brownie started showing the same symptoms as Pumpkin.

So we took her to the vet too, and spent the rest of the evening wondering if we were going to be down to a single pig, and feeling that it was all our fault for feeding them the wrong things. All this was complicated quite a lot by the fact that we don't have a car and were obliged to rely on Mum for lifts to the vet - which she nobly provided. In the midst of this, my great-aunt fell and broke her hip and was hospitalised, and my grandmother hasn't been too well, which put yet more pressure on poor Mum.

As it happened, Pumpkin did have stones, but they were relatively small and she passed them on her own before she was due to have surgery - when she was scanned again, they'd gone. Brownie didn't appear to have stones, but she had calcium buildup which is a precursor, and she had it flushed out (as did Pumpkin). Both of them came home a week ago, and although Pumpkin has been a bit subdued, she's beginning to perk up. Brownie seems to be completely recovered.

All this was very stressful. We love our animals, but hadn't previously come up against the moral dilemmas of having a seriously ill pet. A lot of people would find it silly to go to so much trouble over a little rodent, and I can hardly blame them - but I don't think we could have decided not to.

This week has mostly been taken up with squirting antibiotics and vitamins into the pigs' tiny little mouths, letting them lick slimy drippy invalid food off my fingers, and making sure our well pig didn't chase the others and make them panic. Training for parenthood, maybe?

Things are starting to calm down now. The pigs seem to be recovering on course (the vet said it may take them six weeks to return to normal, but they improve every day). My aunt has had her hip pinned together and seems to be doing OK.

I think we might take a while to recover completely, though.

Green shoots

If you squint, you could convince yourself it's spring. The sun has been shining (some of the time, anyway); bulbs are poking up in the garden; it hasn't been as cold (except on the days when it has).

The onset of possible spring is making me think about plans for the future: short-term ones like knitting projects, and more life-changing ones like moving house and the Baby Question. Only I need to get the Thesis done before I can really think about any of these. I think I maybe need to take some time off work and grind away at it - I have two days a week to do it in, but somehow I never manage to get as much done as I think I am going to.

Not a lot else is happening here at the moment. We went out to lunch with my parents and Granny for Mothers' Day, which was lovely. We'd really celebrated it the week before (since my sister and brother were both away for the actual day) but can you celebrate mothers too thoroughly? Of course not.



J's big news this week is that he has bought a digital satellite receiver. He speaks German fluently and is fond of watching German free-to-air TV, but has hitherto been doing this through an elderly Sky box without a card, which isn't ideal. This new box is very clever, and among other things will receive signals from two different satellites without getting confused, so he can watch either UK television or German through the same box.

This means, of course, that he will need two dishes, one to point at each satellite. He has one in our back garden at the moment (see above) but I happen to know there's another one squirreled away under the stairs. Maybe our (hypothetical) new house needs a bigger back garden.

The other snag is that the new box needs an update to its software before it will receive German HD channels, and he is a bit anxious about installing this. Fingers crossed. (This all seems like quite a lot of trouble to go to to watch *The Simpsons* dubbed into German...)

I received a request a little while ago for a combined picture of my sock monkey with a guinea pig. Here you go, Loth's Second Born - will this do?



J has decided that the monkey's name is "Mrs Monkey". I will shortly be making a Mr Monkey to keep her company, so I expect more sock monkey photographs will be forthcoming.

In other news, I only have one week left of yoga. According to the yoga teacher, I am the only person who's been every week. Unfortunately I still can't do the Half Vinyasa. Perhaps I need more practice...

February's ice and sleet

You know what? I have had about enough of it being February. March can start any time it likes. It has been very cold all week and we have had snow and rain alternately, with high winds from time to time. I don't normally mind winter, but I would really welcome even one day of unseasonal mildness with a bit of sunshine now and again.

On the other hand, February does have a few consolations.



J and I celebrated Valentine's day in our usual fashion, with home-made cards for each other. And then he made us dinner and produced some pink fizzy wine, as seen above (it really was pink, although the red candle behind it is making it pinker).

Then on the Tuesday it was Pancake Day and we duly ate pancakes. I've never quite bought the official explanation that we are supposed to eat pancakes on Shrove Tuesday so that we can use up any ingredients that are forbidden during Lent; apart from the egg, there's only flour and milk in them, which doesn't sound terribly indulgent even by the standards of more austere times. Although I'm pretty sure that lemons, maple syrup and large lumps of vanilla ice cream would count as luxuries. (We did not put all these on the same pancake.)

My spare time lately has been taken up with a bit of knitting for the Ravelympics. This is an event on the knitting/crochet social network, Ravelry, and the idea is that during the course of the Olympics you take on a knitting challenge. I decided I was going to learn entrelac, which is a technique that produces knitting that looks like it's woven over and under itself.

Since I was just starting out with this I chose to knit Quant, a headband.



Entrelac turns out to be much less complicated than it looks. The blocks of knitting are attached to each other at right angles; you start one by picking up stitches along the side of a previous block. Then you join it to the one at the side by knitting two stitches together at the end of each row. (There, that made no sense to anyone who doesn't already know how to knit. Sorry.)

I'm very pleased with the finished headband - it should get plenty of wear, since I have another knitted headband that I use a lot. If I wear my hair up, I can't wear a woolly hat, so this lets me have tidy hair and warm ears.


Or it will if I can persuade Pumpkin to give it back.

Upward dog, inhale

Sorry about the pause! I have had a rather busy and exhausting couple of weeks, but am now recovering.

I have been so exhausted that... shock horror... I have done hardly any knitting. I finished off these socks on Boxing Day, but the ones in the previous post are still languishing. I messed up one of the heels, didn't notice until the sock was nearly done, and am still psyching myself up to rip it back.



Still, you don't care about my socks. You want to know how the yoga is going.

My sister and I have now had four classes and are enjoying it. We are doing Ashtanga yoga, which is fairly energetic, although not so energetic that you seriously break a sweat. Our teacher is very nice; she's Spanish, and as a consequence we are probably learning all the words for the different positions with a Spanish accent.

To begin with, we both found it quite tough going: after the first class, I couldn't raise my arms for a few days, while S had a sore, um, gluteus. We seem to be adapting, though I wouldn't say I'm precisely graceful yet. Most of the others in the class are students, although one girl has started bringing her mum, so I'm no longer the oldest in the class. Probably still the chunkiest. But I'm managing OK.

On Monday evening I tried something new: I made a sock monkey.



Sock monkeys have a whole history in the US, but they're practically unknown over here. I think they're cute, though. And surprisingly easy and quick to make. I also like the fact that you do almost all the sewing before you have to cut into the socks, and that one monkey uses up one pair of socks, with hardly any wastage. (These were cheapo knee socks, cost £1.49).

The instructions I used are here.

Sock monkeys are very good at yoga.



I don't know if anyone noticed (other than Mum), but the comments on my last post contain one from J! A rather scathing one, frankly, but still. He excuses himself by saying that he's never commented on a blog before and doesn't know the etiquette. (Honestly. You'd think it was 2003.)

2010

Despite the fact that I was quite happy saying "nineteen-whatever" for the first twenty years of my existence, I am having trouble thinking that this year is "twenty-ten". I'm sticking with "two thousand'n ten" for now, although I hear that most people seem to be quite happy saying "the twenty-twelve Olympics".

I'm hoping that this decade will have a good last year. I will finish my thesis. Maybe we will move house (though I'm sticking with "maybe").

Just now, our own house seems quite big and commodious since the Christmas tree went back in the loft. We have to move the sofa to accommodate it, so we lose a bit of floor in the living room; strange how much difference it makes.

During December, the guinea pigs' living space underwent some renovations:



They're now on a fleece blanket (over newspaper) instead of wood shavings. The wood shavings get kicked on to the carpet, and they also create huge amounts of dust, which was annoying for us and possibly not that healthy for the piggies. The room's been much less dusty since we swapped, and the pigs seem to like the fleece.

They also now have a play-pen in the spare room (which folds away when we need the room), which is what we were making in my last post. I tried to get some pictures and video of them trotting about in it, without much success yet - it's been too dark.



We have not been as badly affected by the snow as... well, as most people we know. Our street is very snowy, but it's not on a slope and we don't have a car, so it could be worse. The main roads are clear, the buses haven't stopped running and the supermarket is within walking distance. It could be a lot worse.

The beasties, of course, are not hugely disadvantaged by the snow (though it would come over their ears if they went out in it). They do seem to think it's hibernation season, though:



It seems like the weather for knitting.



No, I haven't gone completely nuts - these are the toes of socks which I'm making for a "travelling knitalong" (the sock gets passed around a group of five people, each of whom knit a section and finally get their original socks back again). Should be fun. They make good guinea pig hats, don't they?

I cast on a non-travelling sock on the bus when I went to meet up with Loth and Mum on Monday. Mum said she was disappointed by my lack of progress a couple of hours later. I dunno - I don't knit particularly fast, and I thought this was quite good for one day's knitting...



This was rather a rambly post, wasn't it?

In other news, my sister and I are signing up to do a yoga class this year, so as to be calm and serene. "And to have thighs the size of pencils" - sister. Wish us luck with that one.

Busy busy busy

I have been grinding on with various useful tasks today, none of which were terribly exciting until the evening, when I went to B&Q to buy materials for a Mystery Piggy Project. The boy and I then did some sawing and sanding. Pictures when we finish!

(See what I do to try to induce some dramatic tension?)

Then we built the Billy Bookcase which has been languishing in our spare room for two weeks. It looks beautifully empty now, but I promise it won't stay like that.



The books in the picture are not in any kind of arrangement - they were hanging about on the landing waiting to be reshelved. I keep all my fiction in alphabetical order, which may be a little mad as it means that if I buy a new book by Margaret Atwood, everything after "Atwood" has to be shuffled along. Still, I can always find everything.

Other things that happened today: some yarn arrived in the post and I spent some time admiring its beauty:



It's going to be stripy socks. I need to finish my current socks first, though!

And the Christmas Elf arrived. A little late - he should really have been here yesterday, but he's a busy elf. Every home should have one.



By the way, if you are currently elfless, my mother is having a giveaway at her blog which includes this elf's cousin, among other Christmassy prizes. The deadline is the 8th of December.

And now I must go to bed as it's midnight!

(In answer to questions in comments: they're silicone muffin cups, from our local budget supermarket - for some reason they do really nice cookware! And the potatoes are Pink Fir Apple and you don't need to peel them; they're the waxy type that are best boiled.)

Happy Advent!

Or, if you're not contemplating the advent of anything in particular, Happy December.

Sorry. NaBloPoMo was a resounding Fail this year. I don't know quite what happened, but I lost the rhythm somewhere there.

Still, new month, new attempt to blog a bit. Two weeks ago, rather to my surprise, I managed to sort out my annual leave for the year. Because of various events beyond my (or anyone's) control, I had a lot left - more than I had working days left this year, in fact.

And they're letting me take them. I don't have to work again in 2009 :)



This is something of a boon as I have this thesis to finish. The original plan was to have a first draft in by Christmas. I don't know whether I'll manage that, but it's looking a lot more likely than it was.

In addition to which, I have had time to do things like dig up our homegrown potatoes (see above) and make chocolate-cherry cupcakes.



The cupcakes are very good indeed. Possibly not health food. Oh well, chocolate has antioxidants in it...

Petty scofflaws

So apparently it is the law that you can't go to IKEA without buying tealights and napkins (see yesterday's comments).

Well, I may be incriminating myself here, but we didn't buy either of those. In the interests of full disclosure, this is what we came home with:

* A steel vegetable dish with a ceramic lid
* Four white pasta bowls
* A washing-up brush
* A sieve
* The famous salad spinner
* A shower curtain
* Two venetian blinds (for the bathroom and the downstairs loo)
* A Billy bookcase

J is not very big on candles, being afraid of fire, so I don't think I have ever bought tealights from IKEA. We have a small box of Sainsbury's Basics ones in case of powercuts, but they have remained unopened since we moved here, I think.

Come to think of it, I would normally call little candles in metal casings "nightlights". What's the connection with tea? Do you put them under your samovar, if you happen to have such a thing?

Neither the venetian blinds nor the Billy have been assembled yet. My family have meanwhile been suggesting that buying a new Billy is a bad idea, because it may provide more book storage but doesn't address the real problem, which is that I buy too many books. A bit like extracting oil from tar sands.

I have pointed out that it was J's idea to buy another Billy (which may make him an enabler of my book addiction, but there we go). Also, if you have lots of books, you're sequestering carbon. Right?

Crisis over?

We now have a theory about why the piggies were nibbled (though not who did it). I mentioned it can be a sign of stress.

Last week we had to remove their little wooden house temporarily on a couple of occasions, because they had got it wet and it had to be cleaned and dried out (guinea pigs don't do well in damp conditions). This definitely freaked them out a bit and they all crammed into the other shelter, which they don't normally sleep in. I wonder if that's when the nibbling happened.

In any case, we have made a trip to the petshop and bought them a new plastic house, which will be readily washable and should give them a safe place to hide even if we have to take their wooden house out again. You're really supposed to provide one hiding-place per pig, and while we had the wooden house, a cardboard tube, and a shelter, we didn't have a spare if any needed to be removed.

No more nibbling has taken place. Fingers crossed.

We also went to IKEA yesterday and bought various household items, including a salad spinner. Apparently my husband has always yearned for one. Known him for eleven years, but he can still surprise me!

So we are not going to worry too much, and going out for Sunday lunch. See you later!

Good news, bad news

J's parents are here, which is lovely. It is J's dad's birthday today, which is also good.

Not so good is that two of our piggies, Brownie and Pumpkin, seem to have nibbled patches in their fur, on their cheeks - which means that they didn't do it themselves. This is known as barbering and it's not a good thing - it can be a sign of stress or aggression, and can be a forerunner of biting. The un-nibbled pig is Cupcake, who is about as aggressive as a cotton-wool ball, as far as we can tell.

So maybe Brownie and Pumpkin are doing it to each other? But it seems very odd that the patches would be in exactly the same place, which they are. We've never seen any of them behaving aggressively, so it's hard to tell.

I have posted for advice on a guinea pig forum and am awaiting developments. We do tend to worry about our piggies' health far more than we probably need to; but then they can't talk, so they can't tell us if something's wrong.

Whatever is wrong, it's not life-threatening and we can take them to the vet next week if we need to. Think about something positive.

It's six weeks until Christmas! I feel fairly positive about this; I like Christmas. Yesterday I saw that they had started to put up the Winter Wonderland amusements on Princes Street. I've never been on the big wheel, but I like the way it looks.

Fusion music

As I cycled home tonight* after doing a bit of late-night shopping, I passed one of the touristy shops selling Scottish souvenirs that infest the centre of Edinburgh. You can usually tell when you're getting near one because of the very loud piped bagpipe music which will be blaring out. (I'm really glad I don't live above one.)

The music sounded a bit odd. As I was stopped at a set of traffic lights, I had a minute or two to listen to it.

It was the Can-Can. Arranged for massed pipes.



*Don't worry, Mum, I had my lights and my new helmet and everything.

A red hat

I went back to work and tackled my e-mail backlog, as you do.

Then I came home, and tried on the latest product of my needles, which had been drying out after being blocked (soaked in water and re-shaped).



I like red hats. A significant proportion of all the hats I've ever owned have been red. Maybe it's the result of early exposure to the Amazon pirates.

Anyway, this red hat is particularly fine because the cables get bigger from the crown following the Fibonacci sequence. I don't suppose Captain Nancy would have been terribly impressed with that, but I like it.



Brownie's not that impressed, either.

Nothingy kind of day

So most people seem to much prefer either summer or winter?

I don't feel as strongly about it as I used to - when I was a teenager I actively disliked summer. Partly, I suspect, because I didn't like wearing summer clothes because the choice seemed to be between "revealing" and "frumpy" and because I felt hot and pink and undignified.

These days I'm not quite so self-conscious, and also I garden, so I like the period when everything's blooming or fruiting. And I like the light. Not good at waking up when it's dark. But I do like cooler weather, in general - maybe I have a tendency to hibernate.

Today was a nothingy kind of day in which I typed up stuff for the Dreaded Thesis, interspersed with brief bouts of messing around on Ravelry. Sorry. Some days are like that. I did cuddle my little furry friends several times, and fed them grapes.



Do not get between a guinea pig and her grape.

I go back to work tomorrow after my two-week-plus absence with the Virus. That'll come as a shock to the system...

Frosty morning

This was the view from my bedroom window this morning - the first frost of the year. It was pretty chilly when I ventured out to go to the supermarket.

Although I feel slightly cheated if it's cold and rainy in summer, I never mind the cold in autumn or winter. To every thing there is a season, and all that. I would rather deal with cold weather than hot weather, because I find it much easier to warm up than cool down.

Besides, I prefer winter clothes to summer clothes any day. There's something satisfying about getting out the flannel pyjamas and long socks and woolly scarves and hats. I like to be prepared for all eventualities, though it must be said that our winters aren't really very harsh in southern Scotland. I might feel differently if I had to struggle through feet of snow.

Even without severe cold, though, the onset of autumn is a good excuse to do a bit of nesting at home, and to wrap up and go for brisk walks.

And to contemplate knitting woolly socks.

Woolfest!

Yesterday got off to a very good start. We made good time down the A1 (we had borrowed Mum and Dad's car for the day). J does not love driving, but it was one of those bright crisp autumn days and there was no traffic to speak of.

St Abbs is not a big place and even with my less than reliable sense of direction, we had no trouble finding the community hall. However, there were no alpacas (or angora goats) outside this time. C'est la vie. I suppose autumn isn't really baby goat season.

We had slightly more difficulty getting into the hall for some reason - the door should have been perfectly obvious, but we ended up circumnavigating the hall completely before we could get in. Oops. But once we were in, we were greeted with tables covered as far as the eye could see in lovely colours:



It wasn't very long before I encountered Ysolda (Edinburgh's local superstar designer) and Jeni of Fyberspates, who I hadn't met before, but who dyes some of my favourite yarns. I bought my first skein of Fyberspates yarn at the last Woolfest in March, and several more have followed - it's all so pretty and lovely to knit with.

I said I would look at all the yarn before investing in any, but I became entrapped by a lovely skein of chunky green twirly yarn in the Fyberspates bargain tub and had to buy it before anyone else did.



It was only £2! Major bargain. It's very, very soft. After this triumph J and I fortified ourselves with tea and scones before looking at the rest of the stalls.



At most of them, something like the following conversation took place:

Me: Feel this: isn't it soft? It's got cashmere in it. And look what a lovely colour!
J: Very nice. What could you make with that?
Me: Oh, socks. Or a little shawl. Or some fingerless gloves, maybe.
J: Mmmm.
Me: I suppose £12 is a bit expensive for socks. Hmmm, look, this one's pretty too. It might be harder-wearing. Maybe I should get this one.
J: Yes, it's nice too.

And so on. The boy deserves a medal.

In the end, I bought two skeins of sock yarn (a bright springy green from The Yarn Yard, and a green/blue/purple Sheila's Sock Yarn from Fyberspates) and the blue skein in the photo above. I think this was very restrained.

Then J and I went for a little scenic walk around St Abbs.





I don't know if you can read this (click for bigger), but the sign says "Harbourmaster's Office".



"It looks suspiciously like a shed" - J.



Unlike when I was there in March and nearly froze and blew away over the North Sea, the weather was calm and still. There were some people at the harbour preparing to go scuba diving.



By now it was mid-afternoon and already starting to look a little evening-ish. The light goes early in Scotland after the equinox. We headed back up the hill and drove off to a country pub - unfortunately arriving after they had finished serving lunch. Oops again. They did us a very nice lemonade and packet of crisps each, though, and we may go back for their beer festival next week - J undoubtedly deserves an outing of his choosing after his patience with my wool-gathering!

We had a lovely time

and I'll tell you all about it tomorrow!

The alpacas didn't materialise, but the scones did. I did indeed meet some Ravellers. And I have four nice new woolly colourful bundles to play with.

I leave the house

Today I wrapped myself up in a big coat and ventured out into the rain to go and have lunch with my sister. Our offices are just a couple of streets apart, so we try to do this every week, and it's so lovely to see her.

I handed over the mitts - they fit, and L seems pleased with them (though she would never ever let me know if she wasn't, because she's lovely!) I am pleased with them myself - they're the best mitts I've done yet, I think, and the neatest as regards the finishing off. I didn't have any holes to sew up at the thumb joint, which is a first.

After lunch I wandered down to John Lewis and bought a clear acrylic desk-tidy thingy in which to put all the notebooks that live on our telephone shelf. Then I went to the café for a cup of peppermint tea. I know how to live.

Tomorrow J and I are going to the Woolfest in St Abb's, a village in the Borders. I am going to look at all the nice yarn (and maybe, just maybe, buy some). J is going because... well, because he's a good husband, really. And he can drive and I can't. I have told him there will probably be alpacas, which are cute, and tea and scones. I hope it lives up to my build-up!

More about knitting and guinea pigs

This is great. The way this is going, I can spend the entire month just answering the comments... well, maybe not. But the snag about starting this in a week when I was recovering from being ill is that I haven't done very much other than knit.

Answers!

Anna wants to know if guinea pigs go to sleep on you (presumably while you're knitting) or move about.

Guinea pigs are weird animals - most of them don't sleep very much at all. They alternate between twenty minutes of moving about and twenty minutes of sitting still - but looking perfectly alert - all day and all night. How they get by on so little sleep is a mystery as yet unsolved by science. It's thought that they take micro-naps but never sleep deeply at all.

I've known some guinea pigs for years without ever seeing them close their eyes. We do see Pumpkin and Cupcake catnapping, but Brownie is pretty much always alert. Cupcake is the sleepiest pig I've ever known, but even she has only gone to sleep outside her cage once (when she was a baby).

They do sit fairly still when they're on our laps, though. A restless pig is usually a pig that needs a toilet break.

Loth, I'm sorry that I can't show them knitting. Can I offer you an intelligent mouse instead?



Meanwhile, I have finished knitting the mitts for my sister. They were a commission rather than a surprise, so I feel I can show you photos without any trouble:





You can see the lacy bit better in the second photo, but I thought I'd better put the first one up just to prove I did knit two! The other knitted thing is a hat, not knitted by me, from which I copied the lace pattern.

Knitting with guinea pigs

Loth wants to know how you knit with guinea pigs.

Well, to be honest I don't.

I have crocheted a guinea pig:



And they often help me take photographs of finished projects:



But frankly, when it comes to the actual knitting, they're not that helpful.