Weddings

It has been a busy few weeks in our household. As Isabelle posted a little while ago, our family has experienced rather a lot of big life events this year (birth, a death, marriage, moving house, retirement, redundancy...).

One of the biggest was three weeks ago, when my sister got married. While I can't claim I did all that much towards her wedding, it did occupy us for a while before it actually happened - Mum and I made several trips to the dressmaker both for L's dress and my bridesmaid dress, which had to be made at the last minute because we had no idea what size I was going to be, nine weeks post-baby. It was really nice to have an excuse to meet up with Mum and spend time with her (we became regulars at Cuckoo's Bakery for a restorative coffee afterwards).

I feel a bit guilty about not doing more towards the wedding. I realise that having a very small baby is a fairly good excuse, but my sister's best friend did a lot more than I did.



This is the only photo I have of us... we don't have the official ones yet.

Anyway, the wedding went off beautifully. My sister looked beautiful and just sparkled with happiness. Her other half is an actor/musician and many of their friends are musical too, so the singing (and signing-of-the-register jazz numbers) were of a high standard. She designed all the orders of service, stationery, place cards and so on, so it all looked very pretty, smart and uniform, and they did something which worked really well - they asked each guest for a "fun fact" about himself or herself, and made them into badges which they put at each place as conversation-starters. (The Peanut still has his, stuck to his car seat - it says "My womb name was Billy". You haven't accumulated many facts when you're only nine weeks old.)

The Peanut was very well-behaved throughout, even though we dressed him up like this:



This suit was a present from some family friends in Spain and we feel it has a certain retro charm, although it is perhaps not the most practical babywear ever. He did also have socks and shoes on. The Peanut spent almost the entire reception being passed from admirer to admirer (allowing his mother to do some dancing!) and eventually went to sleep in his car seat/carrier thing depite the ceilidh band still being in full swing. My great-uncle and aunt were staying in the hotel and lent us their room for feeds, which really saved the evening for us (especially as I had to take my dress off to do this - not really feasible in public).

I was surprised how much I enjoyed the wedding - not that I was expecting it to go badly or anything, but I haven't attended a party with a baby before and I had thought it was likely to make things a bit difficult. But ir really didn't. And it was lovely to see so many of our relatives over the weekend, and meet the groom's family, mostly for the first time. His sister and her husband are lovely and I hope we get to meet them (and their two little boys) again.

And then the next weekend we did most of it again because our friends R and E were getting married up in the Highlands. But that is another post.

Five and a half weeks on

Firstly, thank you for all the congratulations on our boy's birth!

The following extremely self-indulgent post is mostly a record for me, so I can write down things about our little peanut's first few weeks before I forget them. So apologies is this is boring (unless you're one of the grandparents or something, in which case it probably isn't).



The Peanut is now five and a half weeks old, and we are starting to settle more into a routine. J took some extra leave from work, so he was home until the baby was almost a month old, which was a great help as we were finding our feet. As babies go, the Peanut does not seem particularly difficult (I may regret writing this later!) He doesn't sleep all that much, but most of his sleeping happens at night, which is pretty good. So although he's too little to sleep through the night yet, often he only wakes up once, which is not too hard to deal with.

Everybody tells you that babies change and develop really quickly at this age, and it's true (not that I thought they were lying...) When they're born, they don't seem to be aware of very much other than milk. But the Peanut started to "track" with his eyes when he was only a few days old, and we had a Skype conversation with his English grandparents when he was about a week old and you could clearly see him trying to work out where their voices were coming from.

At about three weeks he started to take some interest in objects, usually ones with high-contrast patterns on them (which is what the health visitor said would happen - young babies don't have great colour vision but they can distinguish light from dark).



Around the same time, he started to smile as if he means it.



He's also grown. A lot. He was 7lb 2oz when he was born, and now he's 10lb. One week he gained over a pound. As you might imagine, we are no longer having any trouble getting milk into him, although there have been many days when he has wanted to feed all the time. This makes it a little tricky to do anything other than read or watch TV with the baby in my lap. I haven't worked out how to knit one-handed yet (or blog...)

Here he is at four days:


And this is him at just under a month, wearing the same suit. It's now too small for him (but he has it in a bigger size!) Mum thinks it makes him look like a tiny wizard.



He doesn't look like quite such a new baby any more. His first fuzzy hair is just starting to fall out and his legs and arms are getting stronger. He's still not very chubby, but he's definitely both longer and sturdier.



And we love him.

He's here

Nicholas was born a week ago, at 1.27 on Sunday morning.



Since my last post, another week went past without any sign of labour starting. As a precaution, I was booked in for an induction on the 20th, at which point the baby would have been officially two weeks late. I was told that I’d be offered a full health check before they went ahead and if the baby was still fine, they’d be open to the idea of holding off for a little longer, which was a relief to me as I wasn't keen on induction - partly because J and I were not convinced that our official due date was really correct. It was revised from the 16th to the 6th after our first ultrasound, so going by the old date, the baby wasn't even late yet. I was also worried about the higher risk of having to have a caesarean section if induction failed. As I may have mentioned, I've got a phobia about surgery and anaesthesia which I'd been doing my best to deal with, but I was still hoping to have as few interventions as possible.

As the weekend approached I was beginning to come round to the idea of going ahead, though, if the baby really wasn’t here by then.

However, I woke up at 5am on the 16th with contractions that were about 30 seconds long and 7 minutes apart. I lay there for a bit trying to decide whether to wake J up, and eventually I did. We’d been told at our ante-natal classes to phone the hospital when contractions were 7 to 5 minutes apart, so they’d know to expect us later, so we did. They said not to come in until contractions were 60 seconds long and three minutes apart or less.

It was a long wait for that to happen, though. For a long time the contractions didn’t get any closer together. This did give me a chance to finish putting the binding on the cot quilt I was making (perhaps Nicholas was waiting for me to get that finished?)



Mum came over mid-morning, since she was going to drive us to hospital and it seemed as though we'd be needing her services soon. But the contractions never did form a regular pattern, much to everyone's frustration - sometimes they’d be 5 minutes apart, sometimes 10. They stayed closer together but mild if I was on my feet and moving around, but if I sat down on the sofa or on my exercise ball, there was often a slowdown followed by a really intense one when I stood up. Not being able to predict the next one made it hard for me to distract myself with anything else! At this point they weren't hugely painful, though.

J was also there throughout and was great - he and Mum both helped with timing contractions and talked to me to keep me occupied. His parents live 350 miles away, but as it was a Saturday they drove up. Unfortunately they arrived in mid-afternoon, at which point labour wasn't speeding up at all - so much so that I was able to go to bed for a nap, and when I got up the contractions were more than 15 minutes apart again. I wondered if they’d driven for six hours for nothing!

At about 6pm, things started to move again. I had some intense contractions with 2-minute gaps, began to have some back pain which didn’t fade between contractions, and started to use the TENS machine which a kind friend had lent us. At this point I was mostly dealing with the contractions by getting on to hands and knees on the floor or sofa.

We called the hospital again and were told to come in, and got there about 8pm. We had to wait a bit to be assessed and get into our labour room but it wasn’t as bad as waiting at home; by this stage it no longer felt as though everything might just stop. I was examined and told that I was 6cm dilated, so things were definitely happening, but that I would need to labour on a ward rather than a birthing suite, because they had some concerns about my phobia of anaesthesia. I think this was just so that if I did need anything they would be able to provide it without moving me very far and upsetting me.

However, apart from not having a birthing pool available, I don’t really know what more would have been available in a labour suite - there was a bath, an exercise ball and some big beanbags, and I was free to move about and be in whatever position I wanted. In the end, that was mostly on the bed, though not lying down - I had the end raised and used it to support me as I knelt up, which was certainly easier on the knees than the floor. I used the TENS throughout and started to use Entonox after a bit.

During this stage, the contractions were fairly intense and I lost all track of time. I think I spent a long time just leaning over the end of the bed clutching the TENS control and asking J to pass me the Entonox inhaler at intervals!

The midwife told me that they’d check my cervix again at 2am but to say if I felt the urge to push any earlier, and at about 12.30 I did feel it. So they checked and I was fully dilated. Another midwife came in and they helped me to get into a sort of semi-squatting position against the raised end of the bed, and we got on with it. At this point I found it quite hard to feel when the contractions were happening because I felt pressure all the time, but the midwives helped with that. (J asked me afterwards if I’d noticed their “good cop, bad cop” routine, and he’s right - one of them was telling me how well I was doing while the other was saying “You have to push hard NOW, you’re wasting this contraction!”)

After around an hour of pushing, I had a small episiotomy because there was just not quite enough room for the baby’s head - it had looked as if it was going to appear several times but no progress was happening. At that point I was so ready for him to be born that I didn’t care. Nicholas was born a couple of minutes after that, beautiful and remarkably un-squashed looking. I had him on my chest right away and he breastfed four times before morning. We were really elated although poor J had only had 4 hours’ sleep since the previous evening.



The next day, Nicholas was very, very tired and slept for long periods without demanding any milk. This was a bit worrying, especially as when woken up he didn’t latch on very well. He was also a little jaundiced. However, I had plenty of colostrum and was able to express some to give to him by syringe, and that woke him up enough for him to feed on his own. He continued to have difficulty latching on when he was tired or fretful, especially at night when he seemed to want to feed constantly. We stayed in for three days in the end so that we could have one-to-one help from the midwives, but on Wednesday his jaundice was disappearing, he had had all his tests and was passed as feeding well - he’d only lost 5% of his birthweight - so we came home.



I feel very lucky that the delivery went so well, and almost nothing that I was worried about happened. I seem to have recovered remarkably well.



J and I are now engaged in learning to be parents (we've mastered changing disposable nappies and are getting better at cloth ones). J has taken some leave and is getting very adept at cheering N up by singing to him. N is so lovely and we are so glad to have him here.

40 weeks, no baby yet

So here I am, a day past my due date and wondering when this baby will actually turn up. It's funny - I have been saying for some time that I'm in no hurry for the baby to arrive; I want him to stay in there as long as he needs to, because although I want to meet him, I know life will never be the same again. And I've always thought he would be late, because the official date of conception seemed a bit early to us, and then the due date got moved up by 10 days after the first ultrasound (which would mean this is really only week 38 and a bit).

But... now I'm starting to worry slightly about whether labour really will start to happen naturally. I've no reason to think it won't, but I don't feel any different from a couple of weeks ago. On the other hand, the baby's head is now engaged, according to the midwife, so he's going in the right direction.

Then again, maybe it's just that it's hard to imagine giving birth when you've never done it. Mum says this is normal. I had a hard time believing I could get pregnant, if I'm honest. So I suppose labour will just start when it starts, and then we just have to see how it goes.

We are now officially Ready. We have clothes, we have nappies (disposable for the first few days, then cloth - pre-folds, should anyone be interested), we have a moses basket and a Moby sling. I have made and frozen lasagne and spiced savoury lentil cakes and stocked the freezer and the larder. The baby's room is ready and tidy. I still need to finish my baby quilt and blanket, but I'm working on those.

The baby is not quiltless, however, because one of Mum's blogfriends, Dianne, gave us this beautiful quilt, and a shawl and hat too:



Totally unexpected, but very much appreciated - the quilt is now beautifying the baby's cot, which he won't actually be using for a while yet.

So the baby can come any time. I wonder how we'll feel once things start moving? J is a bit nervous; I'm more apprehensive about needing labour interventions than about the natural course of events. But we can't tell how things will play out, so we're just trying to stay calm.

Some people in this house have no trouble staying calm at all.


Right. It is tea-time. I have no idea what we're having for dinner. (I think the aunt-to-be would suggest curry followed by pineapple... she's quite eager for her nephew to arrive.)

38 weeks (nearly)

I'm now on maternity leave. This should leave me lots of time for blogging. And knitting. And doing all sorts of things. It isn't working out quite like that.

I'm conscious that I should really be making the most of this time because I am not going to have this level of freedom again for a very long time... but I'm finding that a lot of the time, I don't really want to do very much other than maybe poke around reading blogs and Ravelry. Unsurprisingly, I don't have much stamina, and I'm tending to find that if I spend a couple of hours doing anything much I have to have a nap. This is a bit weird, given that I don't usually need much sleep.

We did take on one major non-baby-related project: the lawn, which was infested with large quantities of soggy yellow moss. The process of removing it was made more tricky because I am not really up to the heavier work of raking, scarifying and so on, and J is not a very confident gardener. But he has provided a lot of hard labour, and no doubt has removed the moss much more thoroughly than I would have done myself. We've now re-seeded the bald patches and the rain we've had recently seems to be getting the grass off to a good start. This hasn't been a great year for the garden, but at least the lawn will look nice.

We are maybe 90% ready for the baby in practical terms. The baby's room was repainted and had new carpet put in a couple of months ago; we've assembled and arranged a cot and a moses basket, and we have bedding, and clothes (selected with Mum's help a week or so ago). And nappies.

Psychologically... I'm not so sure. Despite the fact that I can feel Billy scooting about (mostly from side to side) it is a really weird thought that sometime in the next two or three weeks, I will be giving birth and we will have a new little person to bring home.

It hasn't been a particularly rough pregnancy. I haven't had any of the pregnancy symptoms I was dreading (sickness, backache, gingivitis). And I haven't had any real health problems or gained a lot of weight. Even the pelvic girdle pain responded to the exercises for a good few weeks and wasn't much of a problem, although for the last month it has definitely been putting a bit of a kink in things. But there could be a lot of worse problems, and at least it doesn't affect the baby in any way.

Until a few weeks past the 6-month point, I didn't look all that pregnant either. Last weekend my in-laws and parents were both here, and Mum was saying "She definitely looks more pregnant now." Well... since the baby is due in three weeks, it would be a little worrying if I didn't.

I still have things I want to do before the baby gets here; both baby-related and non-baby-related. I've got a cot quilt in progress, and I still need to finish off the baby blanket I was knitting. I'm so lucky that my mother-in-law and a lot of my Ravelry friends have contributed knitted garments, because I have so far managed to knit a total of one baby jumper - which I'm quite pleased with, but wouldn't really be enough on its own!

Other than that... I have a few house-cleaning and re-organising tasks I want to do, but so far the famous nesting instinct has failed to strike. I'm trying to get on with things nonetheless (interspersed with naps).

23 weeks

The weeks of this pregnancy seem to be slipping past awfully quickly. People tell you that the time goes very slowly, and maybe it did in the earlier stages (especially when we were waiting to tell people) but at the moment it feels like it's whizzing along. I can't believe we're more than halfway through.

In part it's hard to believe this because I still don't look pregnant, or not that anyone would notice. I am not particularly small-framed and so far, my stomach isn't sticking out any more than it ever was (although it feels different to the touch). I'm not complaining - so far all my clothes still fit, though I don't suppose this will last long.

But we had the second scan two weeks ago and Billy Baby is growing on schedule and appears to have all the requisite organs and things. And he's a boy. Fairly clearly. We are going to have to think properly and seriously about names now (it won't actually be Billy).

I have been able to feel him moving around for a few weeks now. He seems to object to my sitting down for any length of time... and today, in the bath, I actually saw my stomach twitch in response to a kick, which was pretty strange.

Along with not looking particularly pregnant, I have also not had much in the way of health problems, fingers crossed. The only trouble I'm having at all is some pelvic girdle discomfort, and an increasing tendency for my hips and lower back to seize up if I sit still for too long (which is apparently part of the same problem).

Extra-stretchy ligaments run in my family, and all the oestrogen floating around in pregnancy makes them even stretchier, hence the troubles. Apparently my mum had them too. I've seen a physiotherapist, though, who has given me tips on good sleeping positions and some exercises to help, and I am crossing my fingers that if I behave sensibly, it won't get too much worse.

Meanwhile, J and I have been thinking about moving house. We are not absolutely certain that we'll get this done before Billy arrives, although that was the original plan - at the moment, we are concentrating on doing things which will be necessary if we move but still a good idea if we don't, such as getting new carpets to replace the worn-out ones which were here when we bought our house. This is proving a bit time-consuming, especially as I can't lift anything to speak of (unless I wanted to risk my back) or move furniture.

We like our current house a lot, so mixed feelings abound, but it would be lovely to have more garden and an extra bedroom (especially as we are hoping Billy won't be an only child). And we could do with being in an area with better schools. But all the houses we've looked at seem to have been on the market a long time - over a year in some cases - so we're not certain of being able to sell ours, in which case we may have to put the plan on hold. We'll see what happens.

J has not been too well recently, unfortunately. He's been having terrible headaches, and (probably unconnected) severe nosebleeds. We aren't certain why, although the headaches might be down to some sort of food intolerance, or that's the theory. He's been on a gluten-free diet for a couple of weeks in an attempt to see if that's the problem. So far, it is a bit inconclusive. He hasn't had as many headaches, but he hasn't been headache-free either. He's been tested for coeliac disease in the past, and it came back negative, but apparently it is possible to be gluten-sensitive without being fully coeliac. Tricky.

We're sort of hoping that gluten isn't the trigger, because it is such a pain to have to find complete meals he can eat, especially as he doesn't eat meat. We usually eat a certain amount of Quorn and similar vegetarian products, but only the "chicken-style pieces" are gluten-free. Most things you can quickly stick under the grill are out; pasta is out, unless it's an expensive gluten-free version; lots of sauces are off-limits, and so is anything containing malted barley (a surprisingly common food additive). I have had to get creative with lentils, experiment with baking gluten-free cakes and biscuits, and cook lots of dishes with rice or potatoes. It's not impossible - just slightly harder work.

And if it's decided that gluten isn't the problem, we will have to try something else, I guess...

Seriously overdue post

OK. I have been terrible at posting this last few months. For what it's worth, I've been a bit preoccupied...

J and I are having a baby.

You probably know this if you read my mum's blog. I have been finding it a bit tricky to write about, though. Which is why we are through the first trimester and halfway into the second before I've managed to do it.

We decided at the end of last summer that we were ready (if anyone is ever ready) to start a family, and then... decision made, in theory, we didn't start trying until the end of September. I had sort of assumed that we would need to try for a bit before we would conceive - perhaps because most of the stories one hears on blogs are about people having trouble - but we were lucky. I got a positive test at the end of October, just as we were about to drive down to see J's parents, which was a little strange for us as we'd decided not to tell anyone until the 12-week mark.

At that point, I was very tired, and having slight difficulty explaining why I was so tired. My father-in-law spotted this and I was convinced he was on to the reason why (but he says he wasn't!)

Luckily for me, I didn't have any morning sickness to speak of - I felt slightly off-colour and went off some foods I normally like, but that was all. For this reason I had a lot of difficulty convincing myself that everything was going OK. I don't know whether it was hormones, or what, but I stressed out a lot over whether the baby was healthy and what we would do if it wasn't.

The 12-week scan came as a great relief - the baby was actually there, moving, with a heartbeat! And arms and legs and things!



When this was on the screen, it was a moving image, and you could see the baby sucking its thumb.

That was the 28th of December. Yup, more than a month ago. Since then, things have gone remarkably smoothly. The occasional nausea went away, and I haven't yet put any weight on. I went back to see the doctor last week and all seems to be going well.

J and I are beginning to feel able to talk about this as if it is definitely going to happen. It still feels a little bit like tempting fate, but on the whole I have calmed down a lot. I thought I would get all stressed out again when the time came to take the triple test (for Down's, spina bifida and Edwards' syndrome) but I've managed to stay fairly calm; two weeks to wait for the results.

At the moment, we are 17 weeks along, and the baby is due in early July. We have plenty of time to get things ready before July... right?

The guinea pigs are all fine.

The weather outside is frightful

Well, actually, not as frightful as it has been. But it's pretty cold. If you are reading in Canada or Alaska or the Midwestern US or Norway or somewhere (is anybody?) then you will probably be laughing hollowly at Britain's lack of fortitude and proper snowploughing equipment, but...

Currently we are not under a lot of snow, but everything is rather slippery, and we did have a lot in late November and the first half of December. I am almost the only person I know who managed to make it in to work all the way through this, so perhaps I don't have too much to complain about. (Actually, maybe my dad did. And Mum would have except that the college she works at was closed during the worst weather.)

Just to add to the dangers of falling over on the ice, we have had no streetlights in our road for a couple of days, which is not great when it gets dark at about 4 p.m. Though I can see that icy conditions may make the council less keen/able to get out there and fix the problem.

Struggling through the snow was made slightly more difficult by my not having any wellies. I haven't ever felt the desire for wellies since... probably the last time I was at Guide Camp, which could've been 1994 or so. But now I see the point. Unfortunately I can't find any that fit me - not even the expensive Hunter ones with extensible calf inserts - since I have average-sized feet but serious calves; I like to think it's the cycling that does it.

Ah, cycling. Yes. I haven't been out on my bike since before this weather started. Last year I kept on cycling in everything but the worst weather, but then I fell off three times on black ice and I'm really keen not to do that this year. J has kept going except on the snowiest days, but then his route to work is more along main roads. I am feeling somewhat under-exercised, which is a pity since generally the bike provides exercise that takes no time out of my day (if I didn't cycle, I'd have to spend at least as long on a bus). I shall have to think of something else. Walking gingerly over icy pavements doesn't really get the heart-rate up, or not in a good way.

Oh, moan moan moan moan moan. This is one reason I haven't posted since 23 November (really?) because all I have to say is a bit moany. Sense of perspective here! Our heating is working, and we now have boiler insurance (unlike last winter when the boiler broke in January) and the guinea pigs are fine and there are people with actual misfortunes out there. And I do now have some hiking boots, advertised as waterproof - reduced from £49.99 to £32! and in black, rather than lilac or turquoise! So if deep snow returns, I will be slightly better shod.

And I have now done considerably more Christmas shopping than I had this morning, although the house still looks resolutely unChristmassy. But I'm hoping this will change tomorrow.

I was at an educational/IT one-day conference on Tuesday and live-Tweeted it at the request of the organisers (not a special request to me personally, you understand, but to all the attendees). I now have about 200 new people who want to follow me on Twitter. I hope they won't be horribly disappointed when I revert to very infrequent tweets about my insomniac tendencies or the guinea pigs...

Oh, and Loth - I would happily knit you a Kindle cover. Any time.

Daylight has been in rather short supply up here. It's been raining for much of the past week and at the time of year when it starts to get dark in mid-afternoon, it's a bit discouraging when noon is obscured by dark clouds as well.

However, it has been sunny today. The sunniest spot in our house is the kitchen table (above). I have made a little space among the potted-up cuttings and sprouting beans and lentils to put my laptop and do some work.

We have been having an unusually social time for us. The weekend before last was my father-in-law's 60th birthday and we went down south to spend a few days with them. We usually go by train, but this time we had trouble finding tickets at a reasonable price so we borrowed my parents' car (thank you, parents) and drove. Or rather, J drove. He has never driven that far without another experienced driver in the car, but I think it was good for him - now he knows he can, if he has to. However, despite the attractions of the ducks at Tenby services, we'll be getting the train next time.

We had a lovely peaceful weekend with the family, and FIL's party went well. I finished the second sock of this pair:


They've taken me a while, mostly because the pattern wasn't that easy to memorise, but I'm really pleased with them. They're my first solid-colour socks. (My granny thinks it is silly to put this much effort into socks, and that I should knit the pattern as panels for a cardigan or something, but then I don't really wear cardigans.)

As I was off from Thursday to Monday, I had the equivalent of an entire week off work. Which was very restful.

On Saturday I had another busy day - I went up to see my brother and his girlfriend in the town where they work as doctors. It was an enjoyable trip, but I wish we could have stayed longer and maybe done something together, other than go out to lunch. And we missed my sister, who has moved to London, possibly permanently. (Oh dear! I sound like my mum. Must learn to relax and enjoy the moment.)

On the other hand, it is hard to do anything very vigorous with my granny in tow - she is 88 and although she walks OK, she doesn't go fast and she gets tired. And we could have stayed longer except that I needed to get back to go to a party with J.

This was a friend's 30th birthday and it was a lovely party - we had a meal together and then everyone went to the Dominion Cinema for a private screening of Amelie. They have a room with a big screen, a bar and comfortable chairs and sofas - more informal and comfortable than the usual cinema set-up, but it feels more special than watching a DVD in your living room (shades of pre-teenage sleepover parties!) We like the idea and maybe we'll do it ourselves if we hold a party... if we can agree on a film.

An afternoon out

Yesterday, I decided to go on a little outing to the Morningside Makers' Market. The weather was beautiful in the morning (while I was doing fascinating things like going to the supermarket) but just as I was leaving the house on my bike, it started to rain.

Never mind, I thought, it'll only be a passing shower.



By the time I got to the market, I had revised this view. However, the entrance looked positively festive despite the downpour.

There were lots of lovely stalls inside. I saw silver jewellery, knitted and felted items, quirky patchwork toys and stylish hats (possibly not for wearing in the rain).

I also managed to make a few purchases.

Firstly, I bought some beautiful lampwork glass beads from Min Fidler. They have an amazing amount of detail and change colour according to the light, and I'll have fun thinking what to make with them.





Then I found a little green finch on a stall with lots of toys (including some sock monkeys) and somehow he came home with me.



(This is not the stall - www.madestuff.co.uk - but our telephone table!)

The main reason I'd come, though, was The Yarn Yard's stall.



It was lovely to chat with Natalie and I eventually managed to choose three skeins of yarn - one DK, one sock weight and one laceweight. (I am trying not to buy too much sock yarn as I could keep myself happily knitting socks for about a year without buying any!)



Red, green and blue* - perfect if you should need to calibrate your monitor.

Then before I could spend any more money I headed out into the rain, but only went around the corner to the Rocket café for a cup of coffee and some warm melty chocolate cake, and a little sock-knitting.



There is something soothing about watching the rain pelt down when you don't have to go out in it. Unfortunately I had offered to get J some brake blocks for his bike and some extra dark soy sauce from the Chinese grocery (I always seem to have weird shopping lists at the moment).

So... once more unto the breach. Or the rain. At the bike shop I was served by the member of staff who taught our bike-maintenance class a few weeks ago and then had to fix my bike immediately afterwards (bit of an epic saga) and he rather sweetly asked if it was still working OK (it is).

By the time I got home, I was rather cold and wet about the trousers and feet.



Perhaps I should have worn more waterproof shoes...

Still, it was a lovely mini-holiday from the daily round (and a hot shower and dry socks sorted me out). Tomorrow I shall get back to doing useful things.

*Sorry about the weird shadows; daylight is beginning to be in short supply around here!

Blow, blow, thou winter wind

At the beginning of last week, the weather was crisp and sunny and calm and all the trees still had all their leaves. Towards the weekend, the wind got up and most of the trees aren't looking quite so colourful now.

I don't have many trees in my garden but I appreciate the ones that are there: two Japanese maples which don't even come up to my waist, but which have beautiful leaves, and an Amanogawa cherry tree.

(Hmm. You'd think I had a Japanese theme going deliberately, but I don't.)



I love the bright colours in nature. I'm not sure I'd choose this garnety-red as a decorating colour, but it makes a lovely leaf.

In the meantime, I am eating pumpkin soup (from the "Butternut Squash Soup" recipe in How To Eat - soup from a recipe! how fancy) and knitting socks to keep the draughts from my ankles.

Happy November

So the last anybody heard from me, I was in America, having fun at WisCon. Which I did. I don't have many photographs of the actual con - too busy having fun - but Madison looks like this:



While I was there I tried the local delicacy (tastes nicer than it looks), had my hair plaited up like this, met up with Mum and Dad's old friends J and B and their grownup children (who were lovely) and my internet friend Cabell, among others, and had many, many conversations about Doctor Who and Lois McMaster Bujold books. I did a lot of live-tweeting of panels and felt, for once, as if I was at the cutting edge. I also managed to win a book token and come home with all of these.

And then I came home and was reunited with J and my piggies.



In August I went to the Edinburgh Ravelry meetup and rubbed shoulders with lots of famous-to-me knitters, and some genuinely famous ones. I have been knitting lots of shawls, and a few socks.

Then in September, I went with my lovely in-laws on what has become our traditional British holiday. We were based in Bamburgh in the north of England, where we went for walks and I took lots of wannabe-arty photos.

We also went to Lindisfarne:


and to the Alnwick Garden, which I really liked.



A good time was had in general.


When I haven't been on holiday, much of my life has been spent at work. For various complicated reasons, work has been very busy this summer and rather more time-consuming than normal. I have been finding that I haven't had a lot of brain left to blog with, hence the silence. I am thinking about what I can do about this.

In the meantime I have mustered enough braincells to make a boyfriend for our sock monkey:


to knit some ghosts:


and to make a pumpkin lantern for Hallowe'en.


So maybe I'm back. Hello.

Metaphorical whirlwind

Now that the con is in full swing, I am not finding much time to sit down and write a proper blog entry. I have, however, been using my Twitter - over there in the right sidebar. Possibly everyone who reads this blog either already follows me or has no interest in Twitter, but there it is!

No longer in the air

Later on Tuesday, Madison -

Once I was on the plane and we were up and away, I remembered how much I like flying. I mean it. I think it’s one of the most magical experiences a person can have. I always look out of the windows and it always makes me feel that I live in a wonderful and diverse world, and wonder about the people living below in these places that I’m flying over.

It helped that it was a clear day for much of the journey. We started out by flying more or less directly north up Scotland – I remember last time we flew across the Atlantic, the Highlands astonished me by their apparent emptiness. Presumably the settlements are just too small to see from that height, but the mountains and forests look completely uninhabited. There is still some snow on the higher mountains. As we passed over the north coast I saw some amazing sandy beaches lit up by brilliant sunshine.

Then it was largely empty sea for a bit, with more cloud cover, and I had a bit of a nap until we passed the south coast of Greenland. We also passed slightly south of Iceland, but I didn’t see it (cloud cover plus being asleep) and presumably we were not within range of the volcano. Greenland was deeply impressive – knife-edged peaks with snow clinging to the creases and grey-green vegetation, sloping down to bays that were full of fractured ice, looking like roughly-ground rock salt.

Then it was nothing but sea (with a few icebergs) for a while more, during which time I watched Up In The Air. I won’t write a critique, but I thought it was pretty good – the story seemed to avoid the clichés I thought it might fall into. (It is also a reassuring film to watch if you are in the middle of a complicated air journey, because it is about people who do this all the time and does not show them missing any connections or having any serious travel-related frustration. And there are no plane crashes. It did strike me as a little odd to watch a film about air travel on a plane, but when else am I going to get the opportunity?)

Film over, we were over Canada and I watched the rocky bits of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia give way to an amazingly human-created landscape that seemed to have created to be viewed from the air. Lots and lots of long, narrow, pale yellow or green fields, running exactly east to west. I suppose that the land boundaries must have been determined by someone in a surveyor’s office with a map and a ruler, and then they worked out where the field boundaries were. I think it must look a lot different from the ground.

Once we got over the American border, fields were squarer (though still equally rectilinear) and the ground wasn’t quite so flat. I had thought of New England as being relatively crowded (as American landscapes go) but there were still huge swathes of what appeared to be untouched woodland, especially on the hills. Occasionally you could see what must be a ski slope in winter, but currently just a few stripes of grass leading down a mountainside. There are also a lot of lakes, all of which looked brilliantly blue as they reflected the sky.

As we started to descend I could see more detail of American towns – the most prominent landmarks from that high were athletic grounds. I could often see several running tracks per town, golf courses, and parks with fan-shaped orange areas which I think must be baseball diamonds (I’ll find out). As we started to descend towards Newark I could sometimes read the words on the local football field, such as “Go Wildcats”.

Newark itself looks remarkably like the town you used to get playing the computer game “Transport Tycoon” – rows of similar-looking buildings side by side on streets in a grid, with shallow pyramidal roofs. I’m sure the effect was heightened by seeing it from above, but it was quite striking. As we came in, I could see the towers of Manhattan off to the left, including the Empire State Building, and that arch-shaped bridge that you see in films with all the girders.

The airport experience wasn’t exactly as magical as the flight. I was a bit anxious about making my connection, but I had no problems going through immigration or customs, apart from slow-moving queues and a long wait at the baggage carousel. In fact I think I got the cheeriest immigration guy ever – he was young and jolly and made jokes, not at all like the stereotype!

There wasn’t quite such a good view on the flight to Madison – the weather had turned a bit cloudier – but I did get to see the Great Lakes and discover why they call them that. Imagine if you were exploring and came across a lake that size! I wonder if early explorers thought they’d reached another coast.

When I got off the plane it was extremely hot – even hotter than in Newark, where I had melted more than slightly as I was jogging through the airport. But I managed to find the bus stop without too much trouble and made conversation with a very pleasant PhD student who was also catching the bus back into town. Various people on the bus complained that it was slow and roundabout, but it seemed perfectly efficient to me.

The only flaw in my plan to walk from the bus stop to my hostel is that as soon as I got off the bus, it began to rain. First just a few drops, and then about as hard as I have ever seen it rain (with the exception of the notorious Oxford Punt Incident, maybe). So I dived into a Starbucks, which is where I’m typing this. The menu in American Starbucks is not the same, and iced, unsweetened green tea costs $1.55 – bargain! (This may not sound awfully palatable to those who do not like either green tea or iced tea, but I was desperate for something cold but not sweet, so it fitted the bill very nicely.)

The rain seems to have abated. Off to find the hostel!

(Later still)

I had no trouble finding the hostel, and have now called J by Skype to let him know I'm OK. I haven't used Skype over long distances before, but it seems to work!

And now I'm going to sleep. Madison is six hours behind the UK, so the 25th of May has been going on for rather a long time as far as I'm concerned. Night night!

Zoom

I’m sitting typing this on my laptop in the departure lounge of Edinburgh airport, about to go on a holiday I haven’t told you about because frankly, I had difficulty believing it was really going to happen. This has been a very busy month, one way or another, not least because of the last-minute nature of this trip.

I’m going to WisCon, which is a speculative fiction convention with a feminist slant in Madison in the USA. I have various Livejournal friends who have been to the con on a regular basis, and I was hoping to go last year, but I was involved in a project at work which clashed with it. However, this year I am really going. I’ve never been to a con before, but as they go, this one is meant to be small(ish) and friendly.

Anyway I can just about count on having enjoyable conversations about the minutiae of books that I like but which the general public have probably not heard of. Once you get me started, I can talk about books for hours, but unless the other person is at least interested in the same genre, it quickly becomes self-indulgent.
J and I have several interests in common – music, visual arts, languages – but our taste in books, film and TV doesn’t overlap all that much. J has nobly read various books by Neil Gaiman, and even came to see him read once, but otherwise he maintains a fairly strict “no spaceships, no pointy ears” policy. He prefers comedy to drama and non-fiction to fiction, and I go the other way. My family are all readers, but are not particularly drawn to fantasy or SF – the word “piffle” has occasionally been bandied about. This is fine. There are genres in which I have no interest (straight romance, the kind of crime novel that has lots of information about different types of ammunition, horror). But it will be nice to meet some people in real life who know what an ansible is or how to get a dragon to do what you want (it seems you need his true name, and nerves of steel...)

It will also be lovely finally to meet the LJ friends in real life. As it happens, some old friends of my parents live in Madison (total coincidence) and I’ll be meeting up with them too.

This month has been a bit of a rollercoaster of stress, followed by relief, followed by stress. One of our guinea pigs is still not completely better, which has been taking a lot out of both of us (although she seems to be responding to treatment). And it is such a long time since I have been away that I’m totally out of practice (also, last time there wasn’t a volcano). I think next time I go abroad I’ll go somewhere within the EU – much easier!

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.)