More news

Already a week gone. We've spent an afternoon at my sister's, getting a bit too much sun and eating and drinking well (two glasses of wine hits hard after 6 months of no alcohol!). We've had some time in town (St Helier) walking along the pedestrian precinct where the majority of the shops are. We bought the kids some underwear at BhS (much better than the stuff we get in Canada). K and S found a couple of Lego sets that they couldn't resist at 101 Toys (all the boys received money from their grandparents). R has met up with some of his old colleagues at Customs. L hasn't been able to hook up his computer to the internet yet....he tried to do it here at my sister's but it didn't work. Last night we had dinner at my in-laws' place and then had a lovely walk around the country lanes.

One forgets how small everything is here. In Canada we're used to four lane highways as standard, big spaces, big vehicles, lots of room. In Jersey, the main roads are two lane, and as soon as you get onto the minor roads they are so narrow that your car is brushing the grass on each side. And then you meet someone coming the other way and have to find a layby to pull into!

The traffic is stop/start and slow - the island speed limit is 40 mph but you rarely get up to that because of the narrowness of the road and the quantity of cars. I read once that Jersey has more cars per person than anywhere else in the world - and I can believe it. One of the tourist leaflets in our flat says that in 2006 there were about 85000 people and 104000 vehicles!!!

Tonight R and I are going out with my sister and her partner for an Indian meal and the kids will be staying at the flat with some DVDs.

It was my nephew's 15th birthday this week and the boys are going to see Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull with him tomorrow. I might even go myself. Then we'll be going out for pizza.

The rest of the week is filling up with more commitments as we try to see everyone before we leave.

Hello from sunny Jersey

Well, we made it safely to our destination...a self-catering apartment (or should I say FLAT) in the island of Jersey. Whenever I say I come from Jersey, people ask, "New Jersey?" But no, this is old Jersey, the original little island in the English Channel. Actually located nearer to France than England, it is part of the British Isles.

We flew to Calgary Friday lunchtime and then on to London Heathrow. I thought the flight would be ten hours, but it was only 8.25 hours (plus a bit for circling above London in a holding pattern). The flight went well - I didn't get any sleep but there were two good films shown and I did a bit of knitting and reading. The kids were fine too.

When we arrived at Heathrow, I was met by an old friend from pre-emigration days. Kathy and I were friends when my first son was little. I joined the local National Childbirth Trust group (a bit like La Leche League in Canada) and built up a lovely group of friends. I have kept in touch with Kathy over the years and she lives not far out of London so travelled there to see me. We spent a couple of hours chatting and catching up on our lives.

After she left to take the train home, we found a relatively comfortable seating area where the two younger boys crashed out for a few hours. The rest of us sat around, walked around, or tried to read, but I was so tired that I couldn't concentrate. After about 7 hours, we finally were able to get our last flight - a short hop from Heathrow to Jersey.

We arrived to driving rain just as it was getting dark. The total travelling time, if you consider we left home at 11am Friday and arrived at about 7.30 Saturday night, and allowing for the 8 hour time difference, was around 25.5 hours.

Some family members were waiting to greet us. We picked up our hire/rental car and drove off to my parents to get the key to the apartment, and after a short visit we left to find our accommodation.

The flat is lovely. Part of an old granite Jersey farmhouse, it's spacious and well-furnished. Two bathrooms. a front-loading washing machine, big dining table, soft beds and fluffy duvets. We're impressed! And only five minutes drive from both my parents' house and my sister's.

We had a good dose of sunshine yesterday and today, so don't mind the rain showers. I'm using my sister's computer right now and will hopefully be able to update again sometime soon. No photos at this point - the teen has possession of the camera and is loading the photos onto his computer so I'm hoping that there'll be plenty to post when I get back home and on my own computer.

Ta ta for now!

Off we go

Blogging may be sporadic for a while as I will be travelling and I don't know how often I'll get to a computer.

Our bags are all packed...we were all ready early as thankfully our first flight is a lunchtime one. Everything fitted in OK - we each have a cabin bag, and there's one big bag to check in for our clothes and the toiletries that aren't allowed in the cabin (over 100ml).

L's laptop will undoubtedly be the last thing to go in HIS bag! The two younger ones have been playing on the Playstation 2 for a while so that they don't ask every five minutes, "When do we leave?"

Hopefully the knitting, books, Lego, games, iPods, laptop batteries etc will last long enough to keep us entertained for the 21 hours it'll take to get to our destination.

Cookies and fun

Lots of baking today - coconut chocolate chip cookies and apple muffins. I bagged them up in fours and put them in the freezer - they'll be coming out again very soon, but I wanted them to stay as fresh as possible.

In between the rainshowers, I suggested to the two younger boys that we go outside on the trampoline. They always seem more willing to go outside and bounce when I'm out there with them.

We had a lot of fun - just plain jumping gets boring pretty fast, so we were pretending to be things, like a seed, a firefighter climbing a ladder, popcorn, a swimmer in shark-infested waters (then we lost our legs, then our arms!), a tree in a hurricane, a worm when it's raining and you have to get out of your tunnel before you drown.....and when we were out of breath we just lay down on the trampoline looking up at the sky, wondering what shapes the clouds reminded us of and watching the clouds travel and evolve. Eventually a big grey cloud moved overhead and we moved inside just in time to avoid the rain!

It's at times like this I wish I could turn back the clock and have all three of the boys out there goofing around with me.....but the 16 year old isn't interested in the trampoline any more, or horsing around with mum.

Meme

I'm not sure how you pronounce this - meem? me me? Anyway, Nan posted this one on her blog and I thought I'd do it. If you're reading it, you're tagged! The only rule is, one word answers only.


1. Where is your cell phone? ………….. none

2. Your significant other?………………….. R

3. Your hair? …………………………………….. short

4. Your mother? ……………………………….. Grace

5. Your father?…………………………………….. David

6. Your favorite thing?……………………….. food

7. Your dream last night?………………….. ?

8. Your favorite drink? ……………………….. rooibos

9. Your dream/goal?………………………….. LYS

10. The room you’re in?…………………….. computer

11. Your ex?……………………………………….. none

12. Your fear?…………………………………….. heights

13. Where do you want to be in 6 years?…….. travelling

14. Where were you last night?………….. home

15. What you’re not?………………………….. model

16. Muffins?……………………………………….. gingerbread

17. One of your wish list items?………….. RV

18. Where you grew up?…………………….. Jersey

19. The last thing you did?………………….. slept

20. What are you wearing?………………….. robe

21. Your TV?……………………………………….. Samsung

22. Your pets?…………………………………….. none

23. Your computer? …………………………….. Mac

24. Your life?……………………………………….. good

25. Your mood?………………………………….. excited

26. Missing someone?……………………….. family

27. Your car?……………………………………….. Aerostar

28. Something you’re not wearing?…….. bra

29. Favorite Store?……………………………….. craft

30. Your summer?……………………………….. hot

31. Like(love) someone?…………………………….. husband

32. Your favorite color?……………………….. teal

33. Last time you laughed?……………….. yesterday

34. Last time you cried?……………………….. ?

35. Who will re-post this?…………………….. ?

Planning...

A friend gave me a bagfull of this - it's Hayfield Ibiza and it's an acrylic, cotton and linen blend. Quite thin - probably what we'd call sport weight here in North America. The company is English and I'm not familiar with the yarn (I used to knit in Britain years ago but I'm sure many new yarns have been produced since then.)


I had in mind a little shrug. Tried a swatch on the Bond, but it took the character out of it. It's a thick 'n thin sort of yarn and it really looks best knitted by hand. The recommended needle size is 4mm or US #6, but I went up a size to a #7 and made this swatch. I cast on 50 stitches and put in a 17 stitch Vandyke Lace panel from one of my Harmony stitch books. It's not quite wide enough to carry on and make the shrug, plus I want to do a picot edging at the beginning and end, AND I made a little mistake near the beginning so two of the holes are in the wrong place.

So I shall rip this out and cast on probably 60 stitches and just knit a rectangle and then sew short seams to form sleeves.

This will be one of the projects I take on holiday with me.....the second airplane project will be the balls of Just Bamboo, a # 9 needle and my own scribbled design for a very simple tank top. And in the big bag in the hold, I will stash my pointy metal dpns and my sock yarn. That should see me through the long flights and the time in between!

Just trying something out...

I'm conducting an experiment.  According to my blogger settings, I can email direct to my blog from anywhere.....a handy thing to have if I'm away from my own computer or just want to post quickly without fussing around in blogger.  So this is a test to see if it works!

Recommended blog

I heard about a vegan blog on Ravelry the other day - the recipes sound delicious. It's called Fat Free Vegan Kitchen. Go take a look!

Laughter - the best medicine

Just for fun, a You Tube video that is about something we Canadians all understand - GST! Goods and Services Tax, currently at 5% in Canada, has just been introduced in the island of Jersey, the place I was born. It's 3% there, but on almost everything - including food. Needless to say, there were plenty of protests, and one of them is represented by this video. I find it hilarious, though maybe some local knowledge makes it funnier. I recognise all the places shown in the video and the guy's Jersey accent is so familiar it hurts!

If you find it funny, I recommend one of his other songs, Take That Grouville, also on You Tube.

And I just have to tell you about something my youngest said to me the other day. He said, "How do horses "woof woof"?" I couldn't figure out what he meant until he did the action that went with it! (Hip thrusting, WOOF, just like Flash in Blackadder every time he talks about women.) In other words, SEX! So I said, "Do you mean, how do horses have sex?" And he said yes, so after I picked myself up off the floor (it WAS funny) I explained that horses do it much like any other mammal, and that the male gets up on top of the female, and that when we see them standing around in a field the male's penis is all tucked away inside, but when he wants to mate his penis comes out, and it's HUGE, and the kids had a good giggle about it and that was that.

Some retro decor

Looking through those old photos, I couldn't help noticing the colour scheme in the house in which I grew up.


This photo was taken at Christmas in 1966. I would have been four, my sister two. Admire the lovely curtains with the orange flowers and the carpet that looks almost leopard-print! My dad used to set the self-timer and run around to get into the picture. Handsome devil, wasn't he!


The second and third ones were taken on the occasion of my sister's 3rd birthday. She obviously received a doll's pram as a gift. Note the delightful orange wallpaper. The coal fire in the living room was the only heating in the house, except I think for a wall heater in the bathroom.


Quite a crowd there for the birthday party. This was the dining room. I'm sure that wall co-ordinated beautifully with the black and white tile floor.


The final picture should give you a laugh. I can guarantee this is the most you'll see of me on this blog! I don't know how old I was in this one.

And lastly, for those who are knitting-deprived,
my sock progress...

...actually I have since turned the heel and started decreasing for the instep. This sock is going way faster than the last one!

Memories of my grandparents, Part 3

Only two photos today. In the album my sister made for me are these two, showing my grandparents on my mum's side. Above is (back row) my Auntie Iris and my mum, seated are my Pop and Nan, and in front are my sister, a mystery baby and me. I must be somewhere between seven and ten in this photo as I have those lovely glasses on that I needed after I had the measles. My sister and I are wearing the blue dresses that were our summer school uniform. This was worn with a straw boater hat and white shoes and socks.


This one must have been taken in our dining room in the house I grew up in. Classic black and white tiled floor. I'm the one standing, my sister on Nan's lap.

I didn't know my Pop very well. When we used to go around to their house, he just sat in his chair and didn't say much. He was quite deaf. I do know that he went to Canada as a young man, and when he met my Nan on a trip back to Jersey* he convinced her to marry him and go back to Canada with him. She did, but hated it - something to do with hanging her silk underwear on barbed wire to dry it, according to my mum! Anyway, she was pregnant with my aunt when they returned to Jersey, so that would have been about 1925. He died when I was 14. I still remember my mum coming into the living room and tearfully telling me that he'd died, but it didn't have a lot of impact on me.

My Nan died in 1991 so she never got to see her great-grandchildren. She was quite a character. I spent more time with her and got to know her better when I was an adult myself. She liked to hang out in her local pub and smoke cigars and drink whisky. She'd play cribbage with her friends. I sometimes joined her in the pub when I was about 18, wearing my army khakis and Doc Martins from the army surplus shop.

My two sets of grandparents couldn't have been more different!

*These were my Jersey grandparents - Jersey is the small island in the English Channel where I was born and grew up. I probably saw more of them than my English grandparents, but have more memories of the latter, probably because going on holiday was more exciting!

Memories of my grandparents, Part 2

I came across another photo album today. It's one that my sister put together for me, from photographs made from some of my dad's slides.


I mentioned yesterday that my sister and I had our favourite stuffies that we would take everywhere with us. Well, here's a photo of us - me on the left with my Tickly Ted, her on the right with her Bunny.

This is us at Petersfield Pond. Remember, it WAS the sixties, mini skirts were very fashionable!


In the paddling pool in the back garden at Gran and Grandad's.

In the front garden.

Me, aged three, with Gran.


The golf ball tube that I mentioned in yesterday's post.


And finally....back row, my mum, my Uncle John (deceased), my Auntie Chris (deceased), Gran and Grandad (both deceased)....front row, me aged 10 (we're into the seventies now, can you tell?), my cousin Steven, my cousin Lynne, and younger sister Caroline.

(click on any picture to enlarge)

Memories of my grandparents

Louise at Home is Where the Heart is inspired me to post about my grandparents. A quick look through my photo albums led to me scanning this photo in to show you. I think this was taken in 1988 - we were probably visiting my grandparents' house to attend my cousin's wedding which would have been that year. I remember that because I was married in '87 and my sister in '89 and my cousin in between.

From left to right are my husband, my mum, my sister, her (now ex) husband, my grandfather and my grandmother (my dad's parents).

I loved their old house in Hampshire (England). That verandah nurtured many geranium cuttings throughout every winter. They kept their garden very neat. Their back garden was huge and had a hole in it for putting practice (they were keen golfers). I remember they had golf clubs we could play with and a long yellow tube that stored a number of golf balls.

When my parents, sister and I went to stay at their house for holidays, my sister and I had to share a double bed. Much giggling and farting competitions! In the mornings, we always ran into Gran and Grandad's bedroom and watched the teasmade make the tea. In case you don't know what a teasmade is, it's a machine about the size of a coffee maker that boils the water, pours it into a teapot, and then buzzes to wake you up and let you know the tea's made!

My sister and I had our special stuffed toys - I had Tickly Ted (still have him) and she had Bunny. Once we heard my sister's screaming coming from the bathroom and went in to find Bunny being tossed around on the waves in the toilet! He was rescued, washed and hung on the washing line to dry.

We always were offered bitter lemon to drink (little bottles of fizzy lemon-flavoured drink) and there were cookies in the glass cookie jar on the dresser. We played Solitaire (the one with the round board and the marbles) and Patience (solitaire with playing cards). We had a paddling pool outside on hot days.

My grandad used to work for the Courage Brewery and occasionally one of the carts pulled by two massive shire horses would stop in the road and we'd get to pat them. I have one of the black Courage jugs that my gran used to use for milk - they would be used for water in the pubs.

We used to visit the same favourite places each time we went there - Chessington Zoo, Selbourne Hanger (a zigzag hike), Petersfield Pond to feed the ducks. Many happy memories.

Sadly my grandparents are no longer alive. A few years ago my grandfather was getting a bit dotty and we thought he might be the first to go. Then my gran died suddenly ..... and 6 weeks later my grandad died too. They had two sons - my dad and his brother John - they sold the house in Hampshire, and I find it hard to imagine someone else living in it now.

A Mouse in my Computer Room!

Yes, I know I have a mouse on my desk next to my computer, but this was a REAL mouse, running around amongst the wires and Lego on the floor. (I have told my kids to wash their Lego.)

My teen told my husband early yesterday morning that he'd seen a mouse in the family room. I had to go out yesterday, but before I went I left a couple of buckets out with food in them in the hope the mouse would trap itself. It didn't, though it was probably hiding out, away from L's loud music.

While I was out, I bought two of these (only $3.99 each) and set them up with a dab of peanut butter in them, as per instructions. I also cleared out the Lego and some other stuff and vacuumed the room, as there were crumbs on the floor, evidence not only of the mouse chomping on something but also left around by said teen and his snacking.

I'm glad to say that while the rest of us were in bed, L heard a click and some scratching and the mouse was caught. He released it outside, unharmed. Hopefully it didn't have any friends in the house with it....and we'll be more careful about keeping the back door closed in future.

I had a good stretch of knitting time yesterday while talking with my friend, and this is the progress I made on the new pair of socks. The yarn has some lovely colours in it - hopefully you can appreciate them in the picture.

I was wearing the other ones that I finished recently and I would have liked them to be more snug. So instead of 64 stitches, I cast on 60 for this pair, and I'm going to make the ribbing on the cuff a bit longer too.

I'm so used to the way the cotton/elastic elann esprit hugs the foot that anything else feels odd.

And finally, I heard today about this - TakeBackTheFilter.org. This group is trying to put pressure on Clorox, who own Brita (yeah, really), so that they will sell recyclable filters for their jugs. In Europe, of course, this is already happening. Sign the petition and if you have a bunch of used filters, as I have, send them to this group so they can flood Clorox with a tonne of them and get their message across.

Plastic Potatoes - my letter

The Manager
Quality Greens

Dear Sir/Madam

When I was in your store at the weekend, I noticed that you are selling potatoes, individually wrapped in plastic, that are labelled as “oven-baked taste from the microwave”. On closer inspection, I saw that these potatoes are intended to be baked in the plastic.

I was shocked by this for a number of reasons...

* Blatant waste of packaging - individually wrapped potatoes! Isn’t our planet already overloaded with too much plastic?

* Price - $1.50 per potato - I can’t believe anyone would consider that worth paying.

* Microwaving in plastic - research shows that when plastic is in contact with food in the microwave, it leaches toxic chemicals into the food and creates disease. Also, microwave ovens change the chemical makeup of food and in my opinion should be banned.

Your check-out staff will know me as the customer who always brings lots of cloth bags with me, as well as home-made net bags for loose produce. I will often make my choice of produce depending on whether it is loose or packaged.

I would like to see your store(s) make a stand against over-packaging and, as a first step, stop stocking these “microwaveable” plastic potatoes.

Yours faithfully,

New socks

Hot off the needles, these socks are finally done and they feel very comfortable. The Berroco Comfort Sock yarn is very light to wear - I hope it performs well in the "wear tests"!

I love it when I get to the toe decreasing. It seems to fly by, a little grafting and it's all finished.

Housecleaning - real and mental

No photos today, I'm afraid, so you'll have to take my word for it when I tell you it was a beautiful sunny Sunday yesterday. The temperature was up to 25 degrees and I made sure to change into a swimsuit and toast myself for 15 minutes on each side out on my deck! Sunshine is so good for the mood and the immune system.

My husband was out in the garden in a pair of shorts, sowing seeds and transplanting seedlings. He mowed the grass for the first time this year. The kids were outside kicking a ball around. We went for a bike ride around the neighbourhood (R and I had to dust the cobwebs off our bikes - we haven't used them for a while.) I did some weight training. I baked bread. I did four loads of laundry and dried them on the clothesline. Aaah, the pleasure of collapsing into bed at the end of a pleasantly busy day and putting my head on a pillowcase smelling fresh from being dried outside.

We turned on the irrigation for the first time too, and the boys put on their swimshorts so they could get wet and cool off.

The evening was a time for tea and reading the last of The Sorceror: Fort at River's Bend, the penultimate book in the Skystone series by Jack Whyte.

On Saturday, when I brought home all the groceries, I decided it was time to clean the fridge, so everything came out, food, shelves and all. I washed it all down and put everything back and it looked so neat and clean. I also realised it was time to go through my plastics cupboard - it was getting to the stage that opening the door might result in stuff falling out. So I took everything out of there, matched up containers and lids, recycled a bunch of soy yogurt pots, and now that cupboard is neat too.

Funny how, when one part of my life is in chaos, I feel the need to control another part. My fridge is clean, my plastic containers are lined up, today I'm vacuuming and cleaning the bathrooms, and I wish it was just as easy to do the same inside my head.

Unfortunately, the last week has been a virtual rollercoaster - actually that's not a good analogy, a rollercoaster implies ups as well as downs. I think a better analogy would be "it's going down the toilet". If I were to compare my perception of my current relationships with three particular friends to three earthenware pots, I would say that two are cracked and the third is smashed into little pieces on the floor.

The magic of synchronicity led to my husband finding an appropriate book on the library shelves on Saturday. It's called How to Heal Toxic Thoughts and I've started reading it and completed one of the meditations this morning.

Some garden photos - and a rant

I noticed how pretty the trees in my backyard were looking.

The apricots have already blossomed - I'm hoping that the sudden drop in temperature a couple of weeks ago didn't damage them.

However the cherry and peach trees are looking good, and we have a little colour in the front yard too.


And to change the subject completely, I couldn't believe what I saw at the fruit and vegetable store today. Potatoes, individually wrapped in plastic. The label said that by microwaving them in the plastic wrapper, you'd get that great oven-baked taste!

OMG, I was not impressed. I have recently been making an effort to avoid bringing excessive plastic into my house and will generally choose the loose produce over the prepackaged stuff, putting it into my cart as it is, or in a net bag that I made. This gross example of overpackaging and unnecessary use of resources amazed me - as did the price. These potatoes were a bargain at two for $3. And they weren't that big. Someone is making a big profit on those.

In addition to the wastefulness, I was grossed out by the thought that people would be putting these in their microwaves (which should have been outlawed a long time ago) and cooking them in the plastic, which is known to transfer harmful chemicals to the food. I feel a letter to the store coming on.

Yarn exchange

I visited my local yarn store today to return two balls of the Ty Dy Cotton. I had started my Cat Bordhi Moebius scarf with it but couldn't help feeling that, instead of a scarf, it would feel more like a large dishcloth.


I came home with four balls of Sirdar Just Bamboo in light green. I started a gauge swatch in plain stockinette on #9 Denise needles. I don't know if I have enough, but I'd really love a summer top knitted in this yarn.

Readers from all over the world

One of the fun things about having a blog is hooking it up to Google Analytics and finding out how many people are reading and what countries or cities they live in. I took a screenshot of the map page yesterday - in one month, there have been visits from New Zealand to Canada and everywhere in between. The biggest circle gives you an idea of where I live.

I noticed that my previous post, when viewed in Safari, doesn't show the lyrics to the Queen song. But in Firefox, it does. Odd!

I'm leaving it to Queen to say it for me today