Katie and her mental meanderings

One of my students has just given me a parcel which I’m sure consists of some chocolatey item. Just a moment while I put it in my bike bag, I’m slightly less likely to break into it then!

We’ve spent the last couple of days furthering our Property Empire. As a friend put it “it’s a bit too late to be a babe magnet, and I don’t want to be a fridge magnet, so I think I’ll go for property magnate”. When my grandfather died, we came into some money, and although it’s taken a while to sort out the transfers from the US, releasing from various places etc., we are now officially Better Off. It seems sensible to do something with it other than buy wool and clothes from Boden (my idea) or a sports car (his idea). The idea of a holiday cottage was suggested, but neither of us can think of anywhere we really want to spend every summer for the next 15 years, nor are we terribly convinced of the benefit of holiday cottages in rural areas where locals can’t afford to buy, but we do like visiting London, so we’ve been looking for a flat. If we can’t let it as a holiday flat then people in London always need places to live…

We had a good time charging round London at Estate Agent Pace (very fast) or our pace (slow, with many stops in coffee shops) and found a lovely flat but we, and the agent we were dealing with, were a bit miffed to find the owner had an offer through a different agent that he hadn’t told ours about! We saw another one we quite liked so will try and remember to keep you posted. And if anyone needs somewhere to stay in London, we will have very reasonable rates, I’m sure.

Just finished reading (it was, as advertised, a page-turner so I finished it last night after starting it on the train on the way home!): A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian. Highly recommended, very funny and also quite poignant.

You asked for a picture of the technocosy…

I’ve also been making some mini hats for Innocent’s Age Concern campaign:

This one:

is supposed to be a mini version of the pink wig.

These ones:

are just silly (and, I’m sorry, a bit out of focus). The last one, and slightly more successfully, the first of the three, are mini versions of the Umbilical Hat from Stitch and Bitch, whereas the middle one is a knitted-in-the-round version of the one on the Innocent pattern page. I’m only glad I bought loads of tiny, tiny double-pointed needles from ebay recently.

I also finished the knitting on my Clanger and have sewed up (and stuffed) the body but don’t have any pipe cleaners or felt so can’t get any further with it. It’s a bit pot-bellied though – too much blue string soup, I think.

This one has such a great title that I had to put it at the top of the entry. It’s by the comedian, folk singer, and outdoors writer Mike Harding, who we saw last week, and I have to hope that my brother doesn’t read this blog (I don’t think he does) and also that he doesn’t look too closely at his Christmas present, and therefore doesn’s spot the toast crumbs sprayed there in a fit of hilarity.

Yes, it’s the time of year when we all read our friends’ and relatives’ Christmas present books, very very carefully.

In other news: I have a repeat of last year’s virus which has inflamed my inner ear, leaving me as the GP said “like being drunk without the nice part”. I was warned against driving and he was very happy to hear I didn’t cycle to work, either, yesterday. I am staying at home today and taking my anti-dizzy tablets…

and not much happening, despite good intentions to get loads done. However, I did make some very Blue Peter Christmas cards, from a Traidcraft kit, and I finally got round to ringing the Brownie lady, who put me on to the second Brownie lady, who told me please please come along as two of them are leaving/hardly ever coming to Brownies, so I will be popping along to play Ladders and train children on their Home Security badge in January, all being well.

I’ve also emailed back the seven or eight people who wanted to meet up and knit, and we are again hopefully going to meet in January…

My latest masterpiece, finished yesterday while watching Bleak House (top show! Gripping!) was a little cosy for The Spouse™’s new smartphone. Funnily, I found it sitting on the hall shelf after he’d left this morning. Don’t blame me if it won’t start because it’s cold, dear.

Didn’t get the very large grant I applied for earlier in the year. I’m not that surprised, but it’s upsetting anyway, and it was a lot of work. One of the sets of comments was very negative, and a colleague says it’s pretty hard to get them to take you seriously when that happens, so I’m thinking about my next step. First next step is get on with the million-and-one deadlines I have at the moment, then after that perhaps think about some different new research, and shelve this for a couple of years’ time, maybe.