Nakered

I am absolutely, completely, totally shattered. I got barely any sleep this weekend because Unity had a cold and teething, but last night was the worst ever. She winged and cried and moaned and screamed out. I did absolutely everything i could to comfort her, but she gets very frustrated and almost lashes out when you try to pick her up or cuddle her. She also hates to sleep in our bed so me and poor Colin had to take turns to get up and comfort her. And just when she finally fell quite, Leo woke up about 4am and decided that he wanted to sleep in our bed, so we were all squashed and hot together.
On the positive side we had a great laugh on Saturday because we made our festive gingerbread and decorated the tree.

The brown-haired boy is Alex our neighbour and Leo's best friend. They constantly bicker but miss each other profoundly if dont see each other on the weekend. Here we are cutting the cookies.



Unity getting a bit overwhelmed and dramatic. " Oh, creative decisions." May be she will grow up to be an art director.
And here is decorating. I got different food colorings and mixed up very bright liquid icing.
There also were silver balls, hundreds and thousands, raisins, yoghurted fruit bits and lots more of things to put on top. So it all end up looking like Jackson Pollock


I didnt take the picture of the Christmas tree yet, but i will. by the way, if you want a recepie of great gingerbread, here is one:

12oz Plain Flour
1 teaspoon Bicarbonate of Soda
2.5 teaspoons of ground Ginger
1 teaspoon of mixed spice
1 teaspoon of cinnamon
4oz unsalted butter
6oz Light brown soft sugar
1 egg - beaten
4 tablespoons Golden Syrup
pre-heat the oven to 190 degrees C

sift the flour, bicarbonate of soda and ground ginger and spices together in a mixing bowl

chop the butter into small pieces, and rub into dry mixture until the consistency of fine breadcrumbs, then add the sugar and mix together

mix the beaten egg and golden syrup together, and add to the mixture, mixing together to form a dough

Now the fun begins!
Roll out on a floured surface to about 3mm thick, then cut out what ever shapes you want. Put onto a lightly greased or lined baking sheet, decorate and cook for approximately 10 to 15 minutes depending on size of biscuit. I tend to check the colour and spread of the biscuit.

When they are cooked, leave on the baking sheet for a few minutes, then transfer to a cooling rack, and leave to cool completely.

The trick is to try and roll the dough quite thin because it actually rises quite a lot.
Have fun! (thats in case someone does actually reads my blog because the numbers seem to go up, however i dont get many comments)

So close

And yet so far! Im knitting and kitting and still only just past the second decrease on the yoke of the Christmas Cobblestone. im starting to get seriously twitchy about the whole thing, i still got million things to knit before Christmas and very little time to do it. May be i should just give up and put the needles aside and just admit that im no good..... (sobbing with self pity).
Now, i have to remember that Im tough and strong granddaughter of a hardcore woman , who came from the communal farm and end up a head engineer in one of the top factories of USSR and never never gave up (or remarried after becoming a widow at 32). There is will and determination worth mentioning, not my wining over slow knitting. I am ashamed. What would grandma say.
I dont know if i should put the Cobblestone aside though and start on those scarves. May be I'll give it till Thursday.

A lot to do, little time.

Ohhh the time goes sooo fast i have no time to think! Last week i was down with the cold that sort of progressed into flu then into chest infection and i'm still a bit not too great. Have been cycling like crazy though, i mean just fast, but always stopping at the red lights and generally being careful. Ever since we came back from our holidays we have been going all the way, and that 15 miles every day, half of it up the hill. I can just feel my hamstrings turning into stone. Or wood. Anyway, point being- I have been going up Greenwich hill every day and didnt get off once. You know Greenwich hill? Then you'll know what i mean.
Apart from congratulating myself and patting myself on the back i have been cooking (a lot) and knitting (not quite as much). Oh and getting excited about alpacas. I decided im fed up with retouching and wanna have an alpaca farm. Not tomorrow of course, but like in 5 years time. Or 10 years... Just have to see. When there is a will there is a way. And i am serious.
Im so serious i booked myself some spinning classes. I want to start spinning yarn and dying it so that when i have some alpacas i can do those things. I also have been reading a lot on alpaca farming and it all makes perfect sense.
And im progressing nicely on Drops Top 2 in black for my mother in law's Christmas present. Im just being realistic about my ability to knit and also about the amount of time i have. I know i said that my next project was gonna be Superman pullover for Leo, but he suddenly slipped to the darker realms of Batman so now im left with some wonderful cotton in Superman colours (and it did take me FOREVER to find just the right shade of red) and my son doesnt want to hear anything about Superman and totally Batman obsessed. Im personally more of a Spiderman kind of girl, he is not as dark as Batman and not as unobtainable as Superman, just your local hero.
Aaaanyway, it is a bit slow at work today (as in noone has shouted angrily at me yet) so i have time to write my thoughts down. Oh, another thing is that for my mother's birthday she asked me to knit her a vest. It seems everyone is vest obsessed, but i dont mind. So i just received the lovely green wool i have bought on ebay for it. Even though the picture looked totally emerald green and the wool itself is more of a leaf green, which reminds me:
Stop fuffing with the colours in Photoshop people, especially if you dont know what you are doing!
So many ebay sellers think: "oh i'll just up the saturation and lighten it a bit to make it look prettier" It doesn't work like that, all of those things make your colours look wrong. Adding saturation makes things more yellow and lightening things make them more red/blue/green depending on your base color.
Sorry got destructed from important stuff there for a second. So yeah, another Drops vest, here i come. Not the same Drops vest though. So a lot to do, little time.