'Tis the Season

I think I got the festivities started right by bringing these fellas home over the weekend. Bright portents of a very sparkly Christmas, indeed. I'm only a little creeped out by the way their eyes seem to follow me around the room, but I'm sure I'll get over it.

And just where do you think you've been young lady? (I can hear my mother asking from all the way across the Atlantic.) Well, you know how it is... life sometimes catches up with you. The big news is that my Ravelry registration finally came through and pretty much any spare time I've had this week to go online, I've been on ravelry fantasizing about making all the beautiful things you guys have been making. How great is that site? It's an organizer, planner, shop, pattern finder, technique teacher, and bragging space all in one convenient place. Fab.

Other excuses include that I worked a bit of overtime this week, so just the one day off and otherwise I've been curled up in a ball on the sofa while the squirrel (or is it a hedgehog?) who lives deep in the bowels of well, my bowels tears them to bits. I swear there's a vicious animal in there just clawing his way out.

Too much information? Don't worry, there's more. I have a photoshoot scheduled next week to determine the origins of the little beast. I'm a bit nervous about it all, if I'm honest, and have been debating whether or not to mention that I'm getting a colonoscopy for Christmas this year for the blogosphere to balk at. But the truth is it's time for me to be brave.

Instead of staying up nights worrying and making myself sick getting my guts tied up in knots about it, I just plain need to come to terms with the fact that this is the way it is. The facts are as follows: My dad died of colon cancer and his mom too, so I've long known that sooner or later I'd have to have the poopshoot photoshoot and will probably have to have them regularly for the rest of my life. If Katie Couric can do it on national television, I'm sure I'll survive the relative privacy the National Health Service can provide.

Meanwhile, I've nearly finished the Pia scarf from Rowan's Big Just Got Bigger book, though I skipped out on the pink this time and used big wool instead of the shaggier biggie print. So my scarf looks a bit "lacier" than the photo in the book. I'm diggin it. And as long as we're on the subject of knitting, an update on the Pippa bag is overdue. I've finally finished the knitting as of two Monday nights ago, and it's just begging and pleading with me to hurry up and sew it and felt it already. All in due time, my dear Pippa, all in due time.

I've been obsessing over this book that I borrowed from my neighbor this week, and anyone who's not British may not have discovered the lovely and talented Nigella Lawson. I'm in the spring-time of my love, and at this point, I can't get enough of her.

I've been watching re-runs of her shows on the Food network all week. Thankfully, they're on frequently, because I'm apparently not the only one who can't get enough Nigella. Though in talking to friends and colleagues I get the sense that they're over her. I suppose that they've had the past 10 years to wallow in her Nigella-ness, where I've had only a mere week of discovery and inspiration.

I love the way she writes about food. Get this : "The trouble with much modern cooking is not that the food it produces isn't good, but that the mood it induces in the cook is one of skin-of-the-teeth efficiency, all briskness and little pleasure. Sometimes that's the best we can manage, but at other times we don't want to feel like a post-modern, post-feminist, overstretched woman but, rather, a domestic goddess, trailing nutmeggy fumes of baking pie in our languorous wake." Hear, hear!