Babette's Feast

The Ladram Bay annual 3-day judo nightmare is over once more.  Oliver gained his full orange belt, and got noticed by Sensei Goldman (the big cheese in this area as far as judo goes) as doing really well in the body combat session.  This is a huge deal for Oliver, as I am sure that given the choice, he would give up judo tomorrow, so to be singled out for praise by someone he respects and is in awe of is wonderful encouragement. 

When I say 'given the choice, he would give up judo tomorrow', I don't mean that he is dragged there kicking and screaming by his pushy over-achieving parents, I mean that he can, in common with many other boys of his age, err on the can't be arsed side of life sometimes.  Come a Friday evening, donning a judo suit and slipping out into the cold night air to attend a session seems pretty unappealing.  He is not physically competitive either, which may hold him back in one sense, but may help him keep his perspective that it is merely a hobby in another.  Whenever I get to see part of a session, or grading, I am always struck by the respect shown to the younger members by the older ones, and I am impressed by the way in which your progression through the belts demands and expects your involvement with teaching and encouragement of the lower grades.  This is something which can only benefit Oliver in the long run, and he has said he wants to achieve his junior black belt.  This means he will stay involved with judo til at least mid-teens, and I this is something we will guide him towards. 

Enough judo talk.  Lets talk crochet.  Ah yes, hook and yarn blah blah, my favourite.

My extra purple yarn didn't show up on Saturday, boo, and trapped at work in an unfamiliar role for the afternoon saw me trawling the depths of the Internet, more specifically ravelry.com,  for future inspiration.  I came across a blanket, the likes of which I have seen and admired before, but this time I went as far as to buy the pattern to download.

It is called Babette's blanket.



photo from ravelry.com, member Hyeknitter

C'est magnifique n'est pas?

I have all this yarn in my stash:

so the two elements have come together to be best friends.  Mark has rolled them eyes heavenward again about 'another  bloody blanket', but I am not to be deterred.  In fact, it is clear to me that my pile of yarn is missing a colour or two.  I shall be consulting my shade chart forthwith.

I leave you with a couple of pics from the crazy golf at Ladram, post judo, and Oliver showing his new term schedule, where he has managed to wangle himself a day and a half off by skillful manipulation.  Clever boy.

Friday the thirteenth musings

The new yarn which caused me to fawn all over the postman is this:

Nothing terribly exciting, I grant you, but exciting in so far as that I can now crack on with THE singularly most exciting thing to happen to any crafter - starting a new project.  There is nothing to beat that feeling of choosing new supplies, the joy in laying them out ready to feast upon.... I've said it before, and I'll say it again, oh frrrrabjous day.

I also had the brilliant foresight to order this:

which allowed me to make an informed choice on my next order.  Yes, dear SIL, you will note that 'saffron' and 'sunshine' are, indeed, not the same colour at all.  You owe me £1.50. 

I have another purple-y shade to add to this which should arrive tomorrow.  Via a very nervous postman one shouldn't wonder heh heh heh.  I am starting a new ripple blanket for my niece's birthday.  It is in August, so I have plenty of time (kiss of death).  Apparently she likes purple and black.  She is going to be 7.  Or 8.  Or some such age, and I reckon that a ripple in varying stripes of purples, black and cream could grow with her.  Probably.  Possibly.  Who cares, I'll enjoy the journey.

This afternoon Oliver asked me to join in an XBox game with him - Star Wars Lego something or other.  He must have been desperate because I am so seriously embarrassingly crap at managing the controls that it must be painful for him to play against.  He popped in the disc, the game began and our subsequent conversation went a bit like this:

'so what buttons do I use then?'
'OK, A is for jump, X is for shooting, and B is for your inventory'
'An inventory of what?'
'weapons'
'what, so I have a choice of stuff?'
'yeah, press B, press B, PRESS B NOW'

A circle of undecipherable icons popped up on my side of the screen at at this point.  I panicked and chose the first one which was highlighted.  Nothing happened.

'It didn't work, it didn't work'
'it did - look, it's being built'

The chosen weapon (some cannon thing) was indeed appearing before my very eyes in lego blocks on the screen. 

'how do I use it?'
'you have to get in it'
'IN it? how?'
'press Y'

Suffice to say I started losing interest very rapidly.  The game seemed to be progressing at a ridiculously fast pace, I was being blown into small bits of lego quite frequently and running round inside a purple force field in circles.  Although I probably shouldn't be, I am impressed with Oliver's ability to manage all these different functions at the same time without his eyeballs exploding. 

Today was Oliver's annual judo course at Ladram Bay.  Normally I just drop him off first thing and bugger off to Exmouth for a charity shop trawl for 3 hours, but now, with the fear of plunging blood sugar levels, I felt I should stay and administer glucose at regular intervals.  Good job I did, because exercise seems to affect him quite severely, and I spent most of today pumping him full of energy drinks and dextrose tablets.  It so goes against my principles to be advocating the copious consumption of bright blue powerade.  Sigh.  Spoken to the hospital, and tomorrow we will be reducing his insulin to keep his levels a bit higher.  Worry, worry, worry. 

And finally....

Me boys playing Scrabble.  A PC version which I am highly suspicious of, as it uses 'the official Scrabble players dictionary', or as I like to call it 'the made up words for Scrabble cheating dictionary.'  This 'dictionary' seems to be full of words which are at best complete bollocks.  This game contained the words 'rax' and 'quaid'.  Yeah. 

Even if they are real words, they shouldn't be.

So there.

Here endeth the lesson.

I bloody knew it

Told you that buying garden furniture would cause the rain to fall from the skies.  Since the photo I took on the afternoon we bought it, it has not been warm enough to take the covers off!  I rest my case.

Nice rainbow though.  Can't even begin to describe the complete knob I looked standing out on the decking in the rain this morning in my pjs and proper shoes to take these pics.

Here is my chunky scarf - finished, apart from tassel trimming:

Sorry about the dodgy looking model.

Got some new yarn, quelle excitement.  I was lying in wait for the postman yesterday - obvs no post over Easter, and I really wanted this to arrive.  He was a little surprised as I leapt from the kitchen doorway and virtually pounced on him.  He muttered something about good timing and then tried to make good his escape.  I ruined that for him by calling after him in a plaintive voice: 'I've missed you...'.  No, I am not joking. It was really embarrassing.  After I closed the door I found Oliver stood behind me in stunned silence, plainly sharing my humiliation. 

Now, what to say about Easter.  Hmmm.  It passed in the steady state of acrimony that most enforced family holidays usually generate.  Our fed-up-ness with each other mooching around the house largely stems from the fact that Oliver and I are together pretty much all of the time anyhow, so during holidays he seems to carry round the expectation that Mark and I should be doing something to entertain him.  Feeling the weight of this expectation, Mark and I usually end up circling each other snarling like caged tigers, each feeling a growing rage and frustration that the second we leave the house we will be further pissed off by being swamped by hoardes of other hacked off families and their Easter egg sugar-fuelled offspring.   It is fair to say I f****** hate bank holidays.  Apart from Christmas.  I can forgive all at Christmas.  And that's because people all tend to stay safely within their own homes ha ha.

Er, that's it.

modern day rain dance

Yes, the purchase of nice, new garden furniture is guaranteed to raise the clouds from the horizons. 

I love, love, love this parasol.  On our first trip to B&Q we bought the standard pop through the table parasol, a completely shit and pointless invention as it never EVER gives shade where you need it - ie over the table, instead you get a nice pool of shade four feet away, but after a bit of 'seeeeeEEEE??' and 'we should have got the other one' conversations, I was zooming back to said superstore for an shade upgrade.  For an extra £19 we now have a parasol which does what it says on the tin, we can move the table to the shade (which surely makes more sense, actually, as the shade is now weighed down with 4 paving slabs) and there is the added bonus of getting signals from Mars due to it's satellite-like proportions.

I am really trying hard to like this spring/summer time, as normally I loathe the warmer weather and spend most of it skulking around indoors longing for overcast days and generally spoiling everbody elses joy of sunshine.  Horrible cow.  This year, having determinedly set about enjoying gardening (yuk) and planting real live seeds - I am stunned to report that we actually have growth among the dirt.  Quelle shock.  I keep standing over the seedlings with pride, as if I am personally responsible for their germination and baby green-ness.  I didn't even plant them - Oliver did. 

In crochet world, I am saddened to report that I cannot get to grips with a pattern which I had foolishly announced to my brother I would use to make a blanket for his daughter for her birthday.  It is not tricky, and I am sure I could probably thrash it out, but I am not convinced it will work as well as I imagine, and it will be a waste of time anyway. It is this one, and my brother had chosen the colours for it and everything.  Whoops.  I showed Oliver the little sample piece I had done and apparently the 'hearts' look like bats.  Think I am going to have to default to the ripple.  And, at long last, the granny got an airing post bath:

We went to meet new friends at the end of last week, who live where I would call 'the country' in a beautiful spot.  It was really nice and Oliver had a good time.   Afterwards we popped into the Donkey Sanctuary to have a picnic lunch and say hello to the hee haws.  It is supposed to be a great free trip, but somehow this hour ended up costing me over £20.

 

diabetic blatherings

Last night, after I had dropped Oliver at Judo, I went to do a food shop.  This is about the third or fourth biggish food shop since he was diagnosed with diabetes, and each time I have felt my throat tighten and tears threaten.  For years I have had periods of time where I have dieted, and avidly read food labels for calories and fats.  Now I look at labels for carbohydrates because I have to, and it is for my little boy, not some poxy diet.  And that makes me want to cry. 

We visited new friends yesterday, a lady who has a little boy with diabetes, and she has said I am coping well with the diagnosis.  I feel a bit unnaturally calm with it to tell the truth.  I keep thinking I should feel more frightened, a bit more hysterical, but the reality is, when I start thinking hard about it all, I stop myself from feeling panic.  Partly because Oliver is 'well', and for a period of time at least, this can be fairly easily 'managed', and partly because I think I am a bit scared of being scared. 

One thing I am pleased with, and take a small satsfaction from, is that I took the trouble to explain to him why I was taking him to the Doctors initially - what I was worried about and what might happen if diabetes was the outcome.  Obviously at the time this was an 'if, if, if', conversation and this did cause tears and a little worry for him beforehand.  Still, if he didn't have this info, and hadn't had a notion of the 'if, if, if', I think he would have gone to pieces with the shock.  Forewarned is forearmed?  Or a little knowledge is a dangerous thing?  Who bloody knows.  I suppose it's down to how well you know your kid.  I will always remember her telling us in the surgery that day.  ('I'm sorry, but your instincts are spot on.'  Who wants their instincts to be spot on?  Usually instincts are an indication of something horrible going on) and I will always remember Oliver and I looking at each other open-mouthed with shock and fear, and feeling what I imagine he felt.  Bloody frightened, and I had to be the parent.  No time to cry, that would have scared him more.  I put him in the car so I could ring Mark to tell him.  No time to cry, Mark was clearly shocked too.  Back in the car and straight to the hospital.  No time to cry, Oliver is still tearful.  At the hospital and waiting, and waiting, and testing, and waiting.  No time to cry, he is being admitted.  I went home alone to get some things.  That was the time to cry, but I didn't.  Fool. 

For now, the time for my weeping and wailing has passed and I just feel deeply sad.  Learning to live a little differently is the order of the day.  For Mark and I this is only for the next 10 years tops.  For our precious little boy, it is for ever. 

Now, a spot of crochet

I feel that with my (relatively) new found crochet fetish, I don't want to fall prey to the WIP syndrome, so I have delved into the alarming number of bags accumulating around the place to take stock of my current position.  .  Well, that, and the fact that after a trip to Trago on Saturday Mark started a conversation off with 'not wanting to moan....'  (HAH!  If ever there was going to be a moan coming up - then surely this was going to be it) '...but why have you bought more wool?'  My defence was sound, if a little pissy, but I don't want the wool purchasing to get out of control and overwhelm me with it's silent and reproachful mocking from dusty corners.

So, in no particular order,

The bullseye square blanket.  I really like this one, and I think (hope) Oliver will like it once it's finished, as it's a bit boy-sy.  Then I may get a bit of breathing space for completing this bloody thing which is still haunting me:

The never-ending granny stripe.  I started this in France, in September, for Oliver using colours of his choosing.  I love it, but it is tits boring to do and growing no bigger with every stripe.

My crochet square swap squares.  Now finished - yes, that's f-i-n-i-s-h-e-d.  Ta dah indeed (tee hee Kim).

Then there is this:

From the Cute & Easy crochet book, the wave cushion.  This is one finished side, which I really enjoyed doing, and love the colours, but I just can't face the thought of having to chain a new starting line for the other side, and so it sits, sulking away with the granny stripe.

Which brings me on to this:

This is the wool which caused all the aggro on Saturday.  I blame C*****a.  You know who you are.  She turned up on Wednesday with a beautiful chunky granny blanket casually chucked in the buggy,  and with no preamble stated that she'd made one for all the kids.  I was under the impression that she could barely crochet a few weeks earlier!  I was well impressed with it (and her), and felt the urge to chunky-up myself.  (I am quite impressionable in this respect).  This granny square took under 10 minutes sitting in my Mum's kitchen, so this is a very tempting medium.  Think I may try a chunky scarf with these squares, or just do lines of double crochet. 

Actually, I don't think that's excessive.  Do you??

spooky

Yesterday I read this quote on the internet:

Woe to you! You thieves and imitators of other people's labour and talents.

Beware of laying your audacious hand on this artwork.

It was made by Albrecht Durer in 1511 on the title page of a series of woodblock prints entitled 'Life of the Virgin'.

Last night we were watching an old episode of Morse on DVD, 'Who Killed Harry Field'.  In the last scene Morse utters this very quote.  It happens at 7 minutes in,  if you can be arsed to take a look.

I can't seem to post the actual clip here, my computer 'skills' seem to be malfunctioning this morning, sorry.  I just wanted to record it for my own benefit, as it sent a chill down my spine.  Weird to come across the same 500 year old quote for the first time both within hours of each other. 

The thing I was reading on the internet was about Pinterest, and the current hoo-hah around copyright infringement.  I am not on Pinterest, although I was (p)interested in the concept.  ha ha, see what I did there?  I don't feel massively strongly about banging on about copyright, but I found the story about the fashion student interesting:  She had posted  a photo of herself on her blog and was subsequently, and understandably, a tad taken aback to pop into Tesco for a bunch of bananas only to find that the image from her blog had been taken up by Tesco and printed onto t-shirts!!  Bit cheeky and slack of Tesco I feel.  I made the bit up about the bananas.