Katie and her mental meanderings

Normal morning routine: Spouse™ gets up at 6.20 am or thereabouts, I roll over. Spouse™ comes and gives me a morning kiss at 7.05 am, I again roll over and go back to sleep. Any loud noises or unnecessary wakenings are frowned upon. My alarm goes off anywhere from 7.30 to 8.15 depending on the day. Today it was set for 8.15.

This morning: As normal up to the morning kiss. Then as he leaves the front door I am awakened by a normally wrath-inducing call “Hello… Hello…” “What.”, I say grumpily. “It’s snowing!”

We had no snow forecast, and the weather forecast at 7.55 didn’t mention it for our area, or indeed any precipitation at all for our area. Snow is very unusual here.

It’s melted now, but it was pretty, and it got me at my computer earlier than normal…

are very very nice. I like them. I know you won’t understand them so I won’t bore you with them but I am very happy with them.

I went to the garden centre to buy some plants to put in our brand new beds, as constructed by the nice landscaper man when he also removed the ugly sloping concrete in the yard and replaced it with non-sloping, non-ugly terracotta paving. I had a list of carefully researched plants I wanted, some I already know quite well and others I thought I’d try out. Of course they hardly had any of the ones I wanted, but in fact this may not be such a bad thing because I wouldn’t necessarily have space for all of the ones I wanted!

I did get some soft fruit canes in a bargain bundle, which was supposed to have 5 raspberry canes, one blackcurrant and one gooseberry, and in fact had 6 raspberry canes – I don’t think I even really have room for 5 so they will probably just die, or produce no fruit anyway. The Spouse™ requested a bay tree, too, so we now have a classic ball-trimmed bay tree in a special frost-proof pot which should prove its mettle tonight, going by the weather forecast.

I also bought a sweet little houseplant with red tomato-like things on it. Buying houseplants seems like a completely different enterprise to buying outdoor plants – much more like buying accessories for the house. The pot has to be the right colour for the room, as does the plant, and even the gardening magazine said to throw this plant away when the fruits are gone. Poor plant. I feel as The Spouse™ did when he found out tomato plants don’t last for another year.

I have finally finished making my shawl. I won’t be making one of them again, I don’t think. Or, at least, I’ll think more carefully about it before starting. Shawls are by definition large, should be floppy (i.e. you need to make them in quite thin wool), and although they can have some degree of lacyness, and this does mean fewer stitches per inch, they contain a lot of stitches.

Anyway, here’s a photo:

Shawls are the new ponchos, and chocolate brown is supposed to be the new black. While I’m not sure about the latter, I do think shawls are a lot more flattering than ponchos – although I’ve already been accused once of wearing a poncho, and have even called it a poncho myself. Perhaps a “shawlo”, as The Spouse™ suggested. The brooch came from a junk/antiques market.

You can see the whole thing laid out here and a detail of the stitches here. The pattern and wool came in a kit from Capricorn Mohair, the shawl is no 136. I probably could have got away with one less ball of wool as I only used the last ball for about the last 2 inches of knitting, and by that stage I was getting very bored…

My next knitting project will be SMALLER. Or, at least, will use thicker wool.

I finally spent an actual day in my actual office today. I’m not too sure what I accomplished, but I saw 4 students and answered most of my email backlog.

Hope I get back on UK time soon, though, as I have a 9 am lecture to give tomorrow, and I was struggling to get up at 9.30 today. And roll on the weekend, as the only day I’ve had off in the last 2 weeks was Tuesday, which I spent in Boston, mainly lugging my cases around the city in search of a left luggage office, or in a café nursing a migraine. And people who put you up in their houses and offer you coffee in the morning and don’t tell you it’s decaf should be shot.

They made me a little weepy…

I am now in Boston, where in fact I used to live for about six months, nearly 8 years ago – another very very difficult time in my life, but I really enjoyed it here in many ways. I’m not sure at all what time of day it is, but my stomach thinks its mealtime so I’m about to go and find some food of some variety.

Someone found my blog by googling “katie blog”. I’m second in the (UK) list. Fame!

and I’m just about to go away for work. On my own. I have turned into a wimp who can only go places with The Spouse™. How sad is that?

I don’t really want to say very much, but I would appreciate some thoughts in our direction – there have been several announcements of pregnancies on the Ship recently and I really, really want to be happy for people, but find I cannot.