The Queen Bee News

Crafty Ways With Wool; A Day Out in Hampshire

2011-08-01T12:47:00.009+01:00

We took a little trip to the Smallholding at Tufton to check out an event they put on with the Hampshire Guild of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers called Crafty Ways with Wool.
As a knitter, I haven't always given so much thought to where my yarn comes from. It's almost as abstract a concept as my dinner coming from the farm to my fork. It really opened my eyes to a whole new world of textiles and it was fascinating to see how a fleece can become yarn.

Spinning Demonstrations.
Geno and me, meeting the baby alpacas! (He's such a good sport!)
Wool, yarn and dye samples.From fleece to swatch.

Some of the sheep on the farm.

In case you needed to know your shetlands a bit better!

IntroducingThe Worried Bird Quilt Top (or the Summer Vacation Quilt)

2011-07-29T13:46:00.007+01:00

Just because I haven't been blogging for the past year, doesn't mean I've stopped with the making things. I'm sure any blogger can relate to the tale of woe: life just gets in the way after a while. I'm a college lecturer and when school is in session, it often interferes with of all the things that I'd rather be doing.

That's the thing with being a teacher. Everyone always laments the fact that I get summers off, but they don't realize how many hours you cram in when you're in session. You need those breaks to be human! So you could call this my summer vacation quilt since I started it last summer during my break to the soundtrack of Animal Collective and Ben Gibbard/ Jay Farrar's Big Sur tribute album. I only just finished it this week by adding the outer border during this year's summer vacay to this summer's tunes from some old favorites: Fleet Foxes' Helplessness Blues and Gillian Welch's Harrow and the Harvest. And how happy am I to finish a quilt top! My very first one!
The pattern is based on one by Piece O' Cake Designs that I saw in American Patchwork & Quilting when I was visiting my Mama on a trip back to the US last spring. Don't you absolutely love their work? If I could only be that good at applique! The design was called Vintage with a Twist and the banner on the magazine screamed out No Rules! No Rulers! and I thought... that sounds pretty good to me!
I didn't actually use the pattern inside, I just sort of eye-balled it. I probably should have followed instructions for my first quilt top, but hey, it said no rules! The fabric is from a layer cake by Moda which I can't remember the name of other than it was designed by Mary Engelbreit. A quick google search says it was Basket of Flowers. What DID we do before google, eh?I decided to applique with felt for a couple of reasons. First, no rules! Remember? Second, it was what I had on hand - for some reason I never seem to buy solid fabrics! Finally, it was pretty easy to work with for a first timer, and I have to confess that I cheated by using fusible web instead of properly appliqueing the birds and the trees. I'm still learning, give me a break! I think the results are great! No rules!

Geno says he feels sorry for the little birds. Why are they so sad? What are they worrying about? I really didn't intend to make worried birds when I embroidered their eyes on, but this is how they turned out!
Leave it to Bisbee to supervise my photography session. Did you notice he was peeking over the wall in the photos above?

It's not perfect, but it's my first quilt top and I'm quite pleased with how it turned out! Now for the quilting! I'm going to attempt to do this by hand. Did I mention that my sewing machine has only one speed - light speed! It's American and I haven't bothered to get a voltage converter, so it only goes on super speed. That's why I'm sticking to hand quilting... wish me luck! No rules!

Woah. It's been a long time

2011-06-16T21:59:00.003+01:00

I clicked on my blog link from my Ravelry account this evening and blogger told me that my blog was up for grabs! I decided I ought to update even though I haven't in over a year! OVER A YEAR! Nutso.
Things are good. Busy. What a year! I was laid off work late last spring, spent a week in the hospital with an infected cat bite, got a new job in Hampshire, commuted to Hampshire from Warwickshire for six months and we've been in our new place down here now since January. Since then we've had good friends visit from the Left Coast and I spent two weeks on safari in South Africa!

Meanwhile, I've been crafting. I've been in the garden. I'm in love. Details will follow, I promise.

New Year, New House!

2010-01-02T16:54:00.012Z

I thought it was about time that I showed you around our new place! As most of you know, despite the fact that I haven't posted anything in months (and now you know why!), we moved nearer to Stratford over the Halloween weekend.

Plus, my mom won't get off my back about sending pictures back to her! So here goes!
In order to give you the full experience, I thought I'd start from the beginning, so that you can see the place as you walk up the drive way. Impressive, no? Let the walking tour begin!We've got the flat to the left of the front door.... I'm not really sure of the history of the place, the estate agents described it as 'baronial', which I thought meant that a baron once lived here, but according to dictionary.com it just means big. Fit for a baron.

I guess, that's me. So.... Come on in!As you walk in the front door, it sort of knocks your socks off. What with the red carpet and the creepy, important looking geezers in the paintings on the walls.

Yes, that was a 15 foot Christmas tree you saw in the foyer.
Note the really creepy guy on the wall to your right. His eyes follow you around the room, I'm sure of it. Anyway, take a left and you're at our front door.Go through the door and this is your first impression of our flat, which I have to admit isn't all that exciting. But we're working on it....Look left and you see the only real downside of the place, the galley kitchen. But for what we lack in space in the kitchen the rest of the flat makes up for in spades.Okay, so now you're walking into the front lounge, or the 'Great Room' as the real estate agent called it. Since it's hard to get it all in in one shot I'm taking you panoramic style around the room. Are you ready?First, we have to say hello to Steve, our Beta. And his mates the three amigos (I'm aware that there's five of them, but three just sounds so much better.) There are also two small catfish in there, Mustafa and Aziz. That fishbowl is a real melting pot.Okay, now you're looking immediately left of Steve and the table to the fab fireplace. Unfortunately, my old school X-mas paper chain chose that moment to dive off of the mirror over the mantleplace. Character, right? Sorry about the lighting in here, English winters....Continuing to your left, you get to take in the scale of the room. I think these are 20 ft ceilings with the fancy shmancy chandeliers and window fittings. Look! Cat furniture.And there's Geno, being a good sport.Now you're looking back the way you came in.Back out into the hallway, look left and there's the loo, swing left and....You're in our bedroom, there's an en suite complete with a bidet(!) just through that door on the right. There's also another bedroom about the same size that currently is a box room, but will very soon, if all goes to plan, be my sewing/crafty room! Yay!
Well, that was it.... Oh! I still need to take you outside. We're in about 2 acres of maintained grounds with little hidey holes like this one above.
Did I mention the swimming pool? Doesn't exactly look inviting in the middle of December does it? But all my neighbours assure me it's heated and really nice in the summertime!Here's looking back down the drive way toward the farm land beyond. We're about a mile outside of Wellesbourne and another mile to Moreton Paddox and Moreton Morrell - where I work, by the way! I have a 5 minute commute! And when the daylight returns in the spring, I'll be on my bike. I know, wimpy, right? We're over the hump now, with Winter Solstice a week behind us now, we get a little more daylight every day. At the mo, it's dark when I wake up and dark when I get home from work and I don't trust all those college kids flying down the road not to run me down in the dark!

Okay, now you've seen it. So, what do you think? Want to come over for a swim?!

Happy Birthday to The Queen Bee News!! (and a recipe for Little Ray of Sunshine Cupcakes)

2009-09-20T14:45:00.008+01:00

Happy birthday to my little outlet!! Can you believe it's been two years!? I know!

To celebrate, I thought I'd let you in on my little secret recipe for a sure fire way to warm up even the hardest of hearts or the coldest of feet after a long late autumn hike. These taste just like pure sunshine. I promise.

Note: a fantastic UK/US Imperial/Metric converter for recipes can be found here.

For the cupcakes:

225g or 1 cup unsalted butter, softened
225g or 1 cup caster sugar
225g or 2 cups self-raising flour (or add 1 tsp baking soda if you don't have self-raising)
1tsp baking powder
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla essence

For the Frosting:
115 g or 1/2 cup unsalted butter
225 g or 2 cups icing sugar
1 tsp orange essence OR 1 tbsp orange zest
Food colouring -- orange and yellow
Coloured sugar
Jelly Beans, gum drops or other candies of your choice!

1) Turn on a suitably sunshiny day record for singalong fun eg Vampire Weekend, The Shins, The Noisettes, Hot Chip etc or anything just a little bit Motown (it's just impossible to be sad with a "doo wop doo wop" in the background). AT ALL COST avoid the likes of Bon Iver, Elliott Smith or Nick Drake.
2) Now that you're happily singing along let's make some cupcakes! Turn the oven on to 170 C / 350 F and line your muffin tin with 18 cupcake cases.
3) Combine all the cupcake ingredients in a large bowl and beat with an electric whisk until smooth and pale, about 2 to 3 minutes. Spoon the batter into the cases, filling them just over half full.
4) Bake for 20 minutes or until a wooden toothpick comes out clean when you prick the centre of cake!
5) Boogie down while wiping up and getting on with the fun part, the icing!

1) Prepare the icing by beating the butter, icing sugar and orange essence (or zest) until smooth. Divide into two bowls.
2) Add a tiny amount of food colouring to each bowl and beat until mixed well. I urge you to start of with the smallest amount you can manage -- you can always add more to go darker, but you can't go back to pale! I use a toothpick and gel based food colourings.
3) Here's the fun part. Allow the cupcakes to cool on a rack for at least 15 minutes or so. The frosting will melt if you put it on too soon. Be patient! Do a little dance, make a little love, take the dog for a walk, organize your jelly beans -- anything to resist the urge.
4) Finally, once cooled the decoration can begin! Spread the frosting on the cupcakes, finish with coloured sugar and jelly beans! Get creative, if the flavour of sunshine doesn't cheer you up, decorating these little beauties definitely will!!

Got a thing for chocolate? Want to try a variation of this recipe? Go Chocolate Orange!
Using the exact same cupcake recipe, add 4 tbsp of cocoa powder to the mix and substitute 1 tsp of orange essence for the vanilla and 1 1/2 tbsp grated orange zest. Once mixed add 100 g or 3 1/2 oz of plain dark chocolate chips. Oh yeah (read with my very best Barry White voice).

For the frosting, we're going full on Chocolate Butter Cream:
100 g (3 1/2 oz) of chopped plain chocolate (I find 70% works best -- try Green & Blacks or the co-op for those of you in the UK)
2 tbsp double cream
50 g (1/2 cup) unsalted butter
100 g (1 cup) icing sugar

1) Put the chocolate, cream, butter in a small sauce pan over low heat. Stir gently until combined -- DO NOT let it go to the boil. (Chocolate does funny things)
2) Remove from the heat and stir in the icing sugar until the mixture is smooth. Swirl onto cupcakes and top with orange coloured sugar and a slice from a Terry's chocolate orange. Bon appetit!

It's that time of year again.

2009-09-12T23:58:00.008+01:00

The nights are getting longer. And colder. I'm pulling out the scarves and cardigans and layering. The skies are crisp blue and there's just the beginnings of a nip in the air. That can only mean one thing. It must be knitting season!

A couple nights ago, I started knitting Cedar a doggy sweater with the Noro Kureyon odds and ends in my stash and some general guidance the Cowl and Howl pattern from the original Stitch n Bitch book and inspiration by this strapping young lad who I found while browsing Ravelry. Watch this space for progress pics!(Photo GFTC flickr)

Although now I'm feeling a bit selfish (and a bit chilly!), I want some new knits for me!
Here are the next project contenders. I need you (yes, you!) to help me decide where to start!(Photo: Knitty)

The Riverbanks hoodie from Knitty Fall 2009.
(Photo: Ravelry Christine73)

These fair isle fingerless mittens from Interweave Knits.

(Photo: knitty!)

Quant Headband -- Knitty, Winter 2007. (The force is strong in this one.)

Photo: Ravelry Kathy Noth

The #13 Tasseled Earflap Hat by Kathy Noth and published in Knit Simple, Fall 2007

So... what do you think? What's the next project gotta be?

Psst! Are you on Ravelry too? Isn't it divine? Look me up, I'm thequeenbean!

No cats in these hats!

2009-09-12T23:17:00.004+01:00

I made it to my first British wedding this summer.
I was enamored by all of the hats most of the women wore.

Here's the mother of the bride!
Here's a chicken-egg sort of question -- which do you think came first, the dress or the hat?

I even got in on the action! I felt soooo Jackie O!
Here's one of the boys.And last, but not least, the bride and groom!

The wedding was in June, but as any of you who manage to check this space regularly are well aware, I have been out of action for a while. Geno's off on an adventure tonight, so I've got the house to myself, a glass of red wine and full control of the remote! It's also given me a chance to catch up with you. So how was your summer?

Viva la greyhound!

2009-09-11T22:36:00.002+01:00

Want more? Follow the link! Don't forget to check out chairman Meow.

Mine!

2009-09-06T14:50:00.006+01:00

I love my husband dearly, but he's a sneaky towel thief.

The thing is, I don't mind that he uses my stuff (really I don't!) but under that polished, coifed and stylish exterior there's a sasquatch goin' on!
And sometimes those little curly black hairs that get tangled up in my towel, get tangled up on me! There have been a couple Clarence Thomas situations lately, if you know what I mean....
So I tattooed my towel. Hopefully he'll keep his grubby (furry) mitts off!!

The Mod Dog

2009-09-06T14:13:00.008+01:00

Thanks to Kyra at the Mod Dog for helping my pets look bloody gorgeous!

Here's a little subtle brand placement...

It's not just dogs who get to be mod. Bisbee's collar is so perfect for him, but so hard to photograph through his long luxurious locks! We went for the 'Inked' theme because, as you know dear reader, Bisbee's pretty rock n roll. Remember his time spent in the slammer last year after a big night out?

While taking his photo he did his best Sid Vicious impression, though I can't really tell which finger he's giving me.
Thanks Kyra for styling Long Itchington's most fashionable pets!

So...where have you been?

2009-09-05T17:56:00.011+01:00

This has to have been the longest break I've taken from the blog since this thing first started to take shape two years ago!! Hello again, dear reader. And how are you?Summer flew by this time around. It seems like just yesterday we were back in Pembrokeshire, but these pictures were taken the in the last two weeks of July!! I can't really get enough of the Welsh coast, Pembrokeshire knocks my socks off and I head West every chance I get. The rugged coast line, the bronze age artifacts, modern day artisans, and the deliciously slow pace of life when plodding about the coastal trail. Check out this stone circle we stumbled upon just about a mile from our hostel's back door.

And this old grain millstone with the world's greatest view!
The pace picked up a bit on the other side of the peninsula from where we were staying, with sandy beaches and the throngs to match. Mostly we took in the views on our own terms, though often the wind had other plans.

Can you see why we keep coming back?Oh! And did I mention the ice cream?? If you're ever in St. Davids you've got to stop off at a little coffee shop called the Bench. This adorable Italian man called Gianni makes the most amazing artisan ice creams. I insisted that we go back for a new flavour every day. (I still can't zip up most of my jeans after that trip!)Damn, that's some good stuff. My favourite was the Welsh honey and lavender. Manna from heaven.Did you notice the blue sky as we were packing up to leave? Isn't that always the way?

Sorry about the formatting - I don't know what the dealio is with all those links and to be honest, I can't be bothered to go through and sort it out!!

Puppy Love (this time in yellow)

2009-06-29T07:06:00.006+01:00

The fields behind my house have been puked on by Big Bird.

Or maybe these are the fields of gold that Sting is going on about?

They make my dog smile and that makes me happy.

Know what else makes me happy? Floppy ears. Especially when he runs.

Watch this sequence.

How could you not love that?

It's okay if you want to make this one your desktop background. I already have.

On making me smile

2009-06-22T13:18:00.001+01:00

Floyds Big Nose (explore #44)
Originally uploaded by Boab24

It makes her smile. Twenty times a day, two hundred times a week, two thousand times a season, how many smiles hath the thwacking of one tail wrought? Countless, though more to the point, counted upon, and therefore forgivable, since counting upon anything has been an ability she has not heretofore possessed.

Dante (the Wolfhound) from Sighthound, by Pam Houston

On taking note

2009-06-19T13:43:00.004+01:00

The best way to waste your life, ... is by taking notes. The easiest way to avoid living is to just watch. Look for the details. Report. Don't participate.

~Chuck Palahniuk

This is a desperate lunchtime (Calgon, take me away) post from my office at college. Exams are officially over now, which means that I have about 1 second to finish all of my marking and get grades posted before exam boards with other local universities next week. I don't think I ever appreciated how much marking my college lecturers had to do, it seemed to me at the time that Starman must have intuited all of my grades. (I only got to hear him say "Congratulations" in that robot voice for a 4.0 one time in my 6 or 7 years at UW - how about you?)

Chuck's definitely on to something, though I have to admit, I wish my students had taken more notes considering some of their exam results! Summer is palpable now, can you feel it from where you are?

Take a deep breath.

2009-06-18T13:10:00.004+01:00

"Oh soul, you worry too much. You have seen your own strength. You have seen your own beauty. You have seen your golden wings. Of anything less, why do you worry? You are in truth the soul, of the soul, of the soul.”

~Jalal ad-Din Rumi

Vote for Adam!!

2009-05-13T09:38:00.003+01:00

This is a little bit weird for me, but I'm kinda related to this kid on American Idol. He's in the top 3 now and I'm hoping those of you in the States could vote for him, for me!

Of course, I haven't got a clue what all the buzz about him over yonder Atlantic, and maybe he doesn't even need my vote (by proxy) but I'd hate to have a whole new Al Gore situation on my hands all over again. I didn't vote in that election as I was in Thailand at the time, and I'm pretty sure I'll be burning in hell for it. So, c'mon, help a sinner out. Vote for Adam. (for me)

Talkin' Sweet Walkin', Heart Stoppin', Puppy Love Blues

2009-05-06T21:47:00.008+01:00

Bluebells that is...

Can you imagine it? Stumbling upon this carpet of purest lavender on an unassuming walk through the local wood?
As far as the eye can see. Seriously, it blew my mind. (Get it? Blew. Blue. Tee Hee!)

And the fragrance! It was my first experience in a proper British bluebell wood.
I have to admit, I finally get what all the fuss is about.

The closer you looked, the more incredible the scene seemed. How can each one of these tiny flowers combine to make Summer's grand entrance?
And sometimes, if you looked really close, you could find an intruder of sorts....
But, I digress.... Introducing our new best friend, Cedar!!

We found him at the Dog's Trust in Kenilworth. We've been going to the shelter about once every couple of weeks since November, just waiting for our dog to appear.

And this is The One.

This guy was found chained to a post somewhere in Ireland, of all places. I'm not quite sure how he ended up in Kenilworth, at the Dog's Trust, but I'm guessing as a 'no-kill' charity that they must collect adoptable pups from other organizations that have slated them from 'destruction.'

The vet nursey types among you will notice his shaven forelegs that are telltale signs of time spent in hospital on IVs. He was skeletal when we first met him, three weeks ago, but seems to be putting on weight in no time. Every day, he looks just that much better.I mean, seriously, how f'ing cute is that?? He's turned out to be a fantastically mellow pup of about 6 or 7 months - and a super quick learner. In a week, he's learned a few basic heelwork commands, and can sit and lie down (most of the time!). Luckily for Cedar, I teach in the animal science department of a college that trains dog trainers!!Here he is after his first ever bath!
Feel free to comment on how friggin adorable this puppy is!

How are things with you? What's new?

A day at the wildlife centre....

2009-04-12T20:48:00.003+01:00

I spent Easter this year taking another wildlife rehabilitation class.

Can you guess who this is?

I snuck out at lunch time to steal a few quick snaps of the residents.

Whoooo. Who's had a happy Easter?

What do you do when a friend drops by?

2009-04-07T20:25:00.001+01:00

You make a cupcake decorating station with
four different flavors of frosting!

And then you make her do the washing up.

A Meeting of the Minds

2009-04-04T13:05:00.009+01:00

Meet my friend, Jamie. We met 10 summers ago when we both had summer jobs in Denali National Park and now she's living in Cairo. Since she's just down the road, so to speak, and we're both on spring break at the moment, she's come to visit me for the week. Yay!

I've been considering a new feature on the queen bee news: the interview. Jamie is kind enough to agree to being my guinea pig*.

*Additionally, there's a challenge involved. Last night, we went to see A Winter's Tale in Stratford-on-Avon that was full of the most delicious language. I've tasked Jamie with using our favourite Shakespearean adjective of the night: bed-swerver.

So, how did a girl from the Central Valley of California end up living in Cairo anyway?

Well, I have always been on a bit of a crooked path... I became deeply interested in the Middle East after spending a summer in Jordan on a Fulbright-Hayes program for teachers in 2006. I decided to return to school for my MA and started taking Arabic classes and studying refugee issues in the Middle East and North Africa. I moved to Egypt because it is an Arabic speaking country and Cairo is a crossroad of sorts for refugees coming from the Middle East and Africa. I work at a legal aid non-profit that helps refugees navigate the process for resettlement in third countries. I primarily work with Iraqis.

Your job is pretty intense. What keeps you up most at night?

Resettlement is slow, cumbersome and ultimately a largely arbitrary process. I have definitely shed a few tears with clients that have been rejected for resettlement. They can't go back to Iraq and life in Egypt for a refugee is extremely difficult. Not being able to legally work or send their children to public schools are just a few obstacles that refugees face in Egypt.

Also, I do a lot of casework for people that have been tortured and have met those who have perpetrated torture. Perhaps what is most disturbing is the fact that people who torture others are actually quite normal human beings that get swept up into horrible situations. It would be easier to listen to all the horrific things I have to document if people that tortured were evil. This has forced me reevaluate my core beliefs about human nature.

What's the most satisfying aspect of working with refugees? Are there ever happy endings?

The most satisfying aspect of my job is being a part of the Iraqi community in Cairo. They are wonderful people and I am lucky to have made some great friends. I sleep better at night knowing that I am doing my best to help refugees get out of desperate situations. Are there ever happy endings? Yes. But, the majority of refugees will never be resettled.

What is the most surprising thing about living in Cairo? Are there any common misconceptions about Egypt or living in the Middle East?

Cairo is a city of extremes where the ancient and the modern collide. Donkey carts are just as common on the streets as BMWs. It is loud, frantic and seems to operate without any rules. Yet, somehow it all works and it is an adventure every time I walk out my door. Cairo is one of the coolest cities in the world. She can be a bit intense but if you love her she will love you back.

There are many misconceptions about the Middle East but the one that bothers me the most is the misconception that surrounds women. The Arab woman is stereotyped by the West as a veiled, meek woman that follows her husband like a dark shadow and is forced to remain silent and obey her husband. Arab women are strong, proud and are forging their own path rather than following in the footsteps of Western feminism. There is a long and enduring history of Arab feminism that should be recognized. It is not up to the West to diagnose inequality in Arab society; it has been diagnosed. Rather the West should recognize that Arab women have grappled with gender inequality for over a century.

Check out the Egyptian feminist Nawal al-Saadawi.

What do you miss the most from home?

I have a powerful longing for Mexican food.

Travelling is not without travel trauma. What's the worst thing that has ever happened to you on the road?

Thankfully nothing really terrible has happened to me while traveling. But, I've had my passport stolen in Thailand, my clothes stolen in Costa Rica, and had 30 men surround me and steal my camera in China. I had to learn the hard way to be more careful and wipe the giant target off my forehead.

Moment of travel magic?

Honestly I can't just pick one moment. There have been so many which is what keeps me traveling. But here are a few favorites from the past year:

Watching the presidential inauguration of Barack Obama in Gondor, Ethiopia. It was such an amazing evening to celebrate with the locals. That night really made anything seem possible.

Visiting the mountain gorillas of Parc National des Volcans in Rwanda. A one hour observation of a gorilla family in the wild is all it takes to understand why Dian Fossey spent her life with these amazing creatures.

And of course, there is nothing more exhilarating than speeding through the streets of Cairo in the back of a taxi and making it to your destination alive!

What are your plans after you finish up grad school?

I am getting married and planting a garden.

What country or region is calling your name? Why do you think that is?

IRAN! Have you ever had Iranian food? That is reason enough to go. But really there are so many reasons I am dying to experience Iran: the culture, history, architecture, poetry, people, handicrafts. Who doesn't want a Persian rug?

At the moment Americans can only go to Iran on guided tours. I am hoping relations will improve in the next 4 years so I can get my independent travel on!

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there.” ~Rumi

Talkin It's Only the Spring Equinox and So Far To Go Till Summer Blues Breaking Mittens!

2009-03-21T13:20:00.004Z

Cheer up with these fun mittens that can be easily completed in a weekend. The pattern comes from this book - Noro Mini Knits by Jenny Watson. There's lots of fun patterns in here that I may just get to knittin.

Cute Alert -This Post Contains Photos of Baby Animals!

2009-03-21T09:27:00.000Z

I took the in laws for a tour of my college's farm.
It's officially spring now, and that means one thing. Baby animals!
Just look at those spotty lambs!
(Note the blood on the birthing stall walls - why is the miracle of life so damn gory?)Oh, and look who's holding his first lamb!

Little Windowbox of Hope

2009-03-19T13:31:00.002Z

On winding down

2009-03-07T17:07:00.006Z

http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnfish/3252938723/

At last, a lazy Saturday afternoon. Steaming cup of green tea, an elliott smith serenade, a similar view to the photo above out the garden window at the bird feeder and idly finding inspiration in surprising places like this and this or like this. Ooh! And I've only just discovered this! Where have I been? In fact, I've very nearly committed myself to making the quilt on the cover of this book. My local quilt shop actually does it as a kit that I've been daydreaming about for weeks and I think it's about time I jumped on it. I'm not sure how a quilt kit works, but I can definitely use all the help I can get. I'm finding that my new job has entirely consumed me and I very much need an outlet and/or escape. Even when the G and I went out for a drink at our local last night, I was served by one of my students!

Spring teases me with her lingering hours of cold sunshine, some of my favourite days of all. The ones where you've got to bundle up in scarves and hats to see the bluest sky. (I'm wondering what happened to all the scarves and hats and mittens that graced the Gilmore Girls when the show went off the air. They always dressed perfectly for those chilly, but blue sky days that seem to be the norm in Star's Hollow. Is it wrong that I compare my own life to a television show? Is it as sad as I think it is?)

In motion at the moment are my plans for my upcoming three week holiday for Easter break. I'm afraid it will primarily be a solo mission as the big G is too tied up with the financial year end at work and won't be able to join me in our new Subaru on the road. But no matter, I may find company in a canine companion. I think we'll find a dog soon, (I can feel it) we've been combing the rescue centres for our perfect mutt, but he or she has yet to find us. (Maybe this is her?) It's only a matter of time. Keep an eye out for a knee high terrier mix of some kind for me, will you?

It's that time of year again

2009-02-01T20:58:00.004Z

It's that time of year again where spring teases us with her possibilities. The snowdrops are blooming despite the frost and everywhere you look there are little bits of green poking up through the leaf litter and winter wastes.

I can't believe I haven't posted since New Year's Eve. I know it's no fun reading a blog that only complains about never having the time to update it properly, but the truth is that with my new job, I haven't had hardly a second to myself. I haven't even been making anything to show you lately.

I love teaching on the degree program more than I could have ever imagined. It's challenging and I'm stretched to my absolute limit for the first time (probably) ever. Certainly more than I have been in my flitting about hither and yon of the past few years and it feels really good to exercise my mind for once. It's great to read up on the current issues in conservation especially, since I've been out of the scene for so many years now.

I took a wildlife rehabilitation course here for the first three weekends in January. Effectively, that meant that not only was I working until 9 or 10 every night, I didn't have a weekend to unwind in. The course was really great and I'd recommend it to anybody interested in working with wildlife in Britain. They're sensible. My experience with wildlife rehabers in the past has been mixed - so many of them refuse to put anything down regardless of its chances of being ultimately re-released. Owls with amputated wings, for example, have no quality of life and it's good to see that this particular organization emphasizes this very basic but pivotal tenet.

So what did I do with my first weekend of 2009? Well, I went shopping of course! We've got a cold snap in the forecast and a down comforter was definitely on the agenda. Today, I spent most of the day in a coffee shop, marking essays on Livelihoods vs Wildlife Conservation and preparing for my Anatomy & Physiology class first thing tomorrow morning.

So, with so little of interest to report and nothing to show off or brag about in the domestic arts arena, I'll be signing off now. I don't think I'll be updating often over the coming weeks, I hope to have more time for fun stuff once I get my head around what I'm doing in my new post. No one else stays at work till 9:00 so it must get easier as time goes on!

What's new with you?

An Open Letter to 2008

2008-12-31T15:50:00.007Z

Dear 2008,

Let's begin this letter with some honesty. You see, 2008, I see no reason to end this relationship amicably because frankly, I'm glad to see the back side of you. I hope you can take it, 2008, because I'm not about to beat around the bush. You really sucked ass. You took me to places I didn't want to go and stretched my patience with myself and the challenged the very limits of my marriage.

Am I being dramatic, 2008? Let's look at this more closely, shall we? There was the great tomato blight, the non-summer of record rainfall and flooding, the weeks I spent in the hospital. It's true, 2008, this is the year that my 32 year old body failed me. Okay, okay 2008. You're right. I am being a little dramatic. You sent me some light as well as the darkness. I suppose it would be unfair to hold you solely responsible for the darkness. How can one change the things they don't take responsibilty for?

Maybe I have been too hasty, 2008. You taught me that I've only got one chance in this life on Earth, in this skin that I'm in. And I really need to look after her better. All these trips to the hospital, the operation and the gamut of medical tests! There were hours spent in the loo or in shame for not being able to hold it just a minute longer. You've taught me just how precious health is. In the immortal words of the rockband Cinderella from your forefather 1988 'you don't know what you got till it's gone'.

You have shown me that I need to take her out for walks and bike rides and early morning swims down at the pool and to yoga classes. To choose the fresh veggie stir fry over the sweet and sour pork. To drink more water. To soak in the bath after a long, hard day - and not the bottle of wine.

It's true that there were even some blessings, 2008. I've learned that I can teach. That when I have something to say, people listen. I can motivate teenagers, believe it or not, and 2008, you did give me the opportunity to explore this side of myself.

You even brought me back home, to stand on my home ground though only for a short time, and reconnected me to the light and comfort of old friends long time gone. You also introduced me to the smallest Magnolia and to Caden and Lydia and not quite yet, but soon we'll meet Isla too. That's up to your buddy, 2009.

So, do you see much of 2009? If you do can you tell him that this year will be more about self love. That's my mantra for 2009. On my wedding day, I promised to work toward my true potential. 2008, I think I let the darkness linger a little too long. I'm grateful that I found a partner that can tolerate the darker side of me, but neither of us want to live there anymore.

And with that, 2008, I bid you farewell.

Sincerely,

The Queen Bee

Christmas, Handmade

2008-12-29T14:39:00.000Z

Though they were hung by the chimney with care, there's much better light (not to mention a pretty little hoar frost - perfect for my freshly knitted noro kureyon mittens!) outside today.

(it's a partridge in a pear tree.)

Sadly, I didn't give myself enough time to finish Geno's properly. I have to re-sew in the lining, since I just did a quick whiz round the sewing machine to hold all the parts together as our guests were arriving for Christmas Eve!To make your own, simply sketch out the theme you're after on a piece of felt. Cut out pieces of colourful felt and attach them to the stocking base with a little tacky glue. Embroider any embellishments and et viola! Bob's your uncle. (that's British for you're done, it was that easy - from wikipedia: "In 1887, British Prime Minister Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, appointed his nephew Arthur James Balfour as Minister for Ireland. The press had a field day when he referred to the Prime Minister as "Uncle Bob".^[1] Balfour later went on to become Prime Minister himself.

This theory claims that to have "Bob" as one's uncle is a guarantee of success, hence the implied meaning, "and if you do this, you cannot fail." Use of the phrase is not recorded until 1937, however, and, although the Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English suggests the phrase has been in use since the 1890s,^[2] there is no known example in print predating the entry.^[3]

Another theory is that the phrase derives from the slang "all is bob", which means "everything is good".^[4])

What did we do before wikipedia?

Anyway, if you want to include a lining, just lay the stocking over the fabric of your choice to use as a pattern - remember to include a 1/2 inch seam allowance. I'm aware that I'm being really lazy here and not giving you very detailed instructions. If anyone does want to know how it was done, leave a comment below and I'll come back to tell you more about it. Deal?

Merry Christmas from LegoSantaLand

2008-12-24T12:23:00.006Z

Yes, it's made of legos!

In Berlin, 2007.

We tagged along with friends from the States for New Years last year. The lego Santa was too much to resist to wish you and yours happiest warmest Christmas wishes.

In other words, Frohe Weinachten!!

Random German child (ein Deutsher kind?) for the full effect.

Look who's on the naughty list.

Two Years?

2008-12-22T12:14:00.003Z

Two years ago today, it was snowing in Tucson! With a few of our friends and family shivering beside us, we both said I do. It's hard to believe that two actual years have gone by, 24 months, or 730 days since we tied the knot. It seems like yesterday.

My guy gets my famous lasagne by candle light tonight (no 15 year old mushrooms required) though I expect we won't be able to tear ourselves away from our early Christmas Wii for very long! Who says the romance dies after a couple years of marriage? Besides, it's interactive. Right?

The Ice Storm, Chicken-fried Turkey & the Man on the Moon Part One (or how to make a really bad impression on your future father-in-law)

2008-12-17T13:48:00.011Z

I'm about to experiment in telling a story in installments. I think this story deserves a preface. I've never been one for prefaces as such, I tend to skip them and get straight to the meat of a book, but in this case, a certain amount of background information is required.

I'll start by introducing my father. Blog readers, meet Ricko, Dad meet the blog readers. My dad was a bit on the eccentric side - though I never really saw it that way while I was growing up, but in the telling of these stories now I realize how individual the man truly was.

We'll pick up his story after he and my Mom split up. He'd been living alone in their little A-frame love nest in the Eagle River Valley outside of Anchorage for a good 16 or 17 years by now. When I was 25, after finally graduating college (after 7 years!), I returned to Alaska to make a go of it. The first time I went round to my Dad's for dinner he offered me his famous Moose-meat Lasagne for dinner. It was gorgeous. The mushrooms he used literally melted in your mouth and were the most scrumptious thing I'd ever tasted.

I asked him "Dad, what did you do to these mushrooms? They're amazing." He paused, caressing his long ZZ Top beard as he did whenever he was about to make a point "Well, Brookie." That's what he called me, much to my horror and despite my fervent protests, "Carr's was offering a great deal on mushrooms and I bought the store out."

"I thought you might have picked them yourself, like they were shaggy manes or something?" I suggested.

"Nope, just good ole supermarket variety." He punctuated the comment with a curt nod of the head, his beard hovering dangerously close to his plate of lasagne. "I just fried them up in butter and garlic and froze the whole lot of 'em. Must have been 15 years ago now...." He looked up from his reverie at the sharp sound of my fork clanking off the plate as I dropped it. I quickly recovered it and spent the rest of the meal surreptiously avoiding the mushrooms. I didn't dare inquire about the age of the moose meat, though I'd known he hadn't been hunting in a couple of years....

He was always doing stuff like that, buying the store out of something. It wasn't that he lived so far out of town that it was worth stocking up in case of bad weather. There were plenty of other cabins that were further out and even more remote. He just knew a good deal when he spotted one. There was also the practicality of his driveway. His house was built on the side of mountain and his was a nearly vertical potholed, dirtroad deathtrap that was only passable about 4 months of the year.

There was the time a little later that autumn, the year I came back to Alaska, that he called me up to come over and help him unload the truck of this really good deal he got on canned tuna. "It was such a great deal, Brookie, I bought the whole fucking stock!" He explained, "I even sent the bag boy to out to see if there was any more in the back. Wooh! What a bargain!" He said, clearly pleased with his eye for pinching pennies.

When I arrived, I noticed the Whiskas label on the tin and asked when he got a cat. "Damn it to hell, Brookie. You always did have an eagle eye." He proclaimed, and we hopped back in the truck and took it all back to the store. Even though he threw his receipt out the window on the way back home, everyone at the market knew he'd just bought them out of cat food. The check out girl remarked that she just thought that he really loved his cat.

His infamy in town hadn't always worked out in his favor. The truck was a new edition to my old man, only a year or two old. Before that, and for as long as I could remember, he drove a 1968 VW bus otherwise known, to my sister and I, as Puff Puff Squeeze Cheese. It looked like a block of cheddar, (or maybe swiss cheese near the end with all the rusted out holes and you could totally see the road beneath your feet in places, Flintstones style) and backfired every few minutes, much to the hilarity of my sister and I when we were little. Though by the time we were 14 or 15, it wasn't nearly as amusing.

The Cheese slowly disintegrated over the years, but Dad never seemed to notice or mind very much that there was no heat (this was fucking Alaska for Christ's sake) I don't think it had a muffler for 15 years, and he didn't even blink an eye when the starter finally blew out. He just travelled with a couple of wooden wedges that he'd back up onto if he couldn't find a hill to park on.

Britt and I learned at a young age, how to pop the clutch to push start a car. We were still pretty little, so it was a team effort to get the van started; Britt worked the pedals while I steered and shifted into gear. Dad would push the Cheese down the slope and run along side us and shout "Let 'er rip, girls!" when we'd picked up enough speed. Britt would pop the clutch, while I struggled to push the gigantic gear stick into second. The Cheese would start with a pop (literally, she backfired on ignition) Britt would gently work the brake, I'd stick her in neutral and we'd slow down to halting, rattling speed so that Dad could catch up to us. He'd hop in, light a Lucky and say something like "How bout one for the road, girls?" And we'd find something suitably cold from the ice chest he carried around behind the front seat.

He was, however, a stickler for safety and there was only one working seat belt in the old Cheese on the bench at the back, and he strapped my sister and I into it until we were 12 or 13 years old. Can you picture this? Is there anything more embarrassing than your father when your 12? Is there anything worse than a little sister at that age either? When he'd fill up the tank, he leave us in the van, and wouldn't (couldn't) turn the Cheese off, he'd stand at the pump with the Lucky Strike that never left his mouth alight, the lack of muffler doing nothing to camouflage his bold disregard for gas station rules. He also had a penchant for snacking on raw meat. He'd pick up a package of ground beef from the little store inside station and munch on it while pumping the gas, blood dripping off the end of his beard and running off his fingers in rivulets. As a 12 year old, this nearly topped the list of mortifying behavior, but there was one thing that was even more embarrassing.

He really enjoyed lecturing to tourists. In the summer months, we'd head down to the Kenai peninsula every weekend to go fishing and along the way we'd no doubt cross the paths of the 'Winnebago Brigade', as he referred to them, blocking the road because there was a moose or mountain goat alongside the road. He would take great pleasure in pulling up to the middle of the crowd, the Cheese chugging over so loudly he'd have to shout his well-rehearsed facts about moose biology out the window, all of which culminated in a crescendo of hunting calls for which he dramatically opened the door and stepped out.

He'd cup one hand over his mouth and huff "Mmmwah, mmmwah. That's the sound of a male in rut," he'd explain to the masses, with a curt nod of his head. He'd light another Lucky and hop back in the van and roll out of there leaving the tourists murmuring amongst themselves and with something of a story to take home about their run in with a 'real Alaskan.' Inevitably, there was always a cute boy among the herd of tourists and my sister and I would contemplate the probability of spontaneous combustion from blushing so hard while strapped into one seatbelt at the back of the van.

When the Cheese finally died, sometime in the late 90's, he tried to sell it for parts. When that didn't work, he tried giving it to the scrapyard, but they told him he'd have to pay them to take it off his hands. He finally devised a plan that he thought would outsmart them all. He would remove the license plates, scratch out the VIN and leave it illegally parked in town. The authorities would tow it away, not know whose vehicle it was and be stuck shouldering the disposal costs. It didn't really work out like that, considering it wasn't really that big a town and everybody knew his van.... how could you not have noticed that backfiring, mufflerless, atrocity parked up on blocks at the supermarket?

One more bit of back-story you need to know is that for the last 10 years of his life, he didn't have a toilet. Or an outhouse for that matter. In the 70's, he'd come across this invention called the Destroylet - a propane powered toilet that burned up all your waste. Imagine toilet training on that bad boy! For the most part it worked out well for us, the permafrost made it pretty difficult to dig a septic tank, and no one really wanted to have to trek out to an outhouse when it was 30 below zero in the middle of winter. It didn't really smell that bad and we learned pretty quickly to let it cool off first thing in the mornings before sitting down to take of business.

They stopped making the Destroylet some time in the late 80's, I can't imagine why. That did make it pretty difficult to find parts when things went wrong though, or to get hold of a mechanic willing to work with it for that matter. So when the Destroylet finally took it's final crap, my Dad just lived without. He was on his own, it didn't bother him to go outside - he was Alaskan afterall - though most Alaskans would argue that an outhouse is a minimum requirement.

Dad never did build one. The magpies were pretty pleased with the free style situation as it were. So my dad just took an old lawn chair, ripped the seat out of it and replaced it with a spring loaded toilet seat and he just moved it around the yard, so that things didn't pile up so much that the magpies couldn't handle it. "It's the beauty of nature, girls." Dad announced, "Nothing gets wasted." Whenever we visited, Britt and I had to make the 20 minute journey into Wal-Mart to use the shitter when the need arose.

In a morbid twist of irony, my father died of colon cancer and I try not to think about those last couple of weeks on the lawn chair out in the cold before he finally left this world.

In part 2, I'll introduce you to my sister, her babydaddy and set the scene for the infamous $10,000 Bet that ruined Christmas as this story continues in the next installment.

Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse.....

2008-12-07T16:44:00.003Z

It gets infinitely better! The head cold from hell came crashing down hard on me yesterday morning when I was awakened by a phone call from my drunken sister. (It's 10 hours earlier in Alaska) We agreed to connect again at a mutually in-our-right-mind time, when I finally stumbled downstairs and planted myself on the sofa.

The stars had aligned, there is something oh so right in the world, because as I jockeyed the remote away from my match of the day loving husband, I discovered there was whole marathon of the Gilmore Girls on channel 4. That's right, all Lorelai all the time. If I hadn't been sick, I don't think I would have allowed myself the guilty indulgence of a Saturday afternoon in front of the tube. Are you as hard on yourself about these things? Furthermore, are as willing to admit you like the Gilmore Girls as much as I do?

The day wasn't a complete write off, I did manage to get started stiching our Christmas stockings.... I'll show you more later, but let's just say they're inspired by these ridiculously over priced stockings.

Some more good things about my day included:

Microwave Popcorn.

Lap cats.

Live at KEXP Vol. 4 (thanks Amy!)

A lad's night out for the G - (the remote was mine, all mine!).

Lem-Sip (kind of like theraflu).

My silky green slippers.

Nina Simone

Six Feet Under season 1 on DVD (thanks Zoe!)

On doing it wrong

2008-11-26T13:04:00.002Z

If doing Thanksgiving a week early is wrong, I don't want to be right!

Happy Thanksgiving. Gobble Gobble and all that.

(and since when is Thanksgiving the 4th Thursday of the month? I thought it was the 3rd....)

daydreaming

2008-11-16T20:21:00.006Z

When the mail was slipped through the door yesterday afternoon, there was the regular junk mail and circulars and other useless crap and among them lay a catalogue from a fabric company I ordered online from once. This quilt was on the cover and my mind keeps wandering back to it.

I love the big blocks of fabric that show off the bold fabrics he designs. I love the contrast of aqua and red, and the interplay of the subtle and bright - like dappled sunlight on the forest floor - but blues and reds, hot and cold, fire and ice. With the onset of winter just around the corner, I can imagine nothing so comforting as to cuddle up under this with a lap cat, a good read and a steaming cup of hot cocoa. (speaking of good reads - have you read the Glass Castle? so good!)

Do I dare suggest that I might be capable of tackling a project of this magnitude? If ever there was a quilt that might encourage me to take the plunge it is this one.

And the local quilt shop is selling it as a kit! So I don't even have to sort out the fabrics' yardage or colours or patterns or anything, since I'm not yet savvy enough to venture that on my own. That is, without my quilitin' mama here to guide me! Tempting little Kaffe...

Did I mention that I was offered my dream job a couple weeks ago? I'm going to be teaching Animal Science full time at the local college starting winter term. My timetable looks to be the fun stuff like Animal Behaviour, Wildlife Conservation and Habitat Management, Ethics of Animals in Captivity, Wildlife Rehabilitation and the like.... How lucky am I? Talk about being in the right place at the right time! Having said that, I just don't know where I'll find the time to start a proper quilting project in the midst of all that preparation and assignment marking. But we'll have to wait and see.....

A bird in the hand

2008-11-09T18:02:00.004Z

Work in progress.....

Sundays are for....

2008-11-09T17:47:00.005Z

holding hands...

favourite knits...

noticing the small stuff...
the arrival of winter birds

crunching autumn leaves

sneaking in a cat nap
most of all sundays are for...
blending in harvesting the tomatillos and making salsa (recipe coming soon....)

whiskers

The Results Show

2008-11-09T17:24:00.004Z

Finally some finished projects to show you! I actually finished the Nightingale Lap Quilt last June, but somehow forgot to post it up here for y'all to admire. Oops.
It's my first ever sewing project completely on my own. That is without the help of my very talented (and patient!) madre to help.
I'm totally in love with my new slippers. Aren't they cozy?
The quilt is an exact replica of the one in Aimee Ray's Doodle Stitching, my most loved how-to book of the year. Speaking of books, I finally finished The Story of Edgar Sawtelle and you should too.
Oh yeah, there's been some knitting involved as well.

Let me introduce you to the Pia scarf from Rowan's Big Just Got Bigger book from a few years back. An easy and mindless TV knit that keeps you warm and can be finished in an evening of back to back America's Next Top Model marathons and a bottle of nice, rich red wine. Everybody got one for Christmas last year, and now I've finally made one for myself.
I seriously need to learn how to make those photo mosaics that every other blogger on the planet uses so I don't induce carpal tunnel in you with all that scrolling down and down.

Things That Didn't Happen in the Millennium

2008-11-04T13:25:00.006Z

Did anyone else see that Saturday Night Live news report about 10 years ago, when we were all preparing for the armageddon that was to be Y2K, called Things That Didn't Happen in the Millennium? Cap'n Crunch didn't invade Poland and people didn't line up around the block to vote in a presidential election.

The BBC reports that voters are queueing up for hours before the polls opened in New York and that lines extend 3 or 4 blocks long. Really? How cool is that!? I'm a little sad that I didn't have to line up to drop my ballot in the postbox. I feel like I must be missing out on some patriotic commaradarie or other political quipery. It's just so exciting to have someone to vote FOR for a change instead of trying to choose between the lesser of two evils.

In Britain, the media coverage has been frequent, but not a full on bombardment in the way that I imagine US TV must be right now. There have been a number of documentaries produced by the BBC on America, the best of which is called The American Future: A History * which has some really great historical footage as well as original insight, and is a programme I'd urge every American to watch.

It's a good chance to reflect on the way the rest of the world views American politics and how when America sneezes the rest of the world catches a cold. The advert I've seen the most lately says something like "We can't vote in the election, but the outcome affects each of our lives." or some such. The bottom line being, it's a big deal. Get out there and vote!

Click here to see what Brits are saying about the election on the BBC website.

Love,

Bee xx

*I'm not sure if you'll be able to view the programme online if you're outside of the UK, but I know a lot of you are much more technologically savvy than I am. You'll find a way.

photo found on www.kissmygumbo.com

Happy Halloween

2008-10-31T17:20:00.000Z

Are you thinking what I'm thinking?

2008-10-29T13:05:00.002Z

Tis the season for costumes and candy. I clandestinely ordered some candy corn from an outrageously expensive dealer of American foods here near Birmingham and am hiding them from my husband- greedy, greedy Halloween. This little trick or treater came to my parent's door last year. Is that not the greatest costume of all time?

I'm going to be an Ice Queen. The G will be Mr. T. What about you?

Introducing Oprah and Dr. Phil

2008-10-27T10:32:00.006Z

Meet our new foster kittens!! We sometimes volunteer for the Cat's Protection League, fostering cats until a permanent home can be found for them. These two are feral kittens that were trapped and now are in need of socializing before they can be adopted. So our arms were twisted and here we have another massive cage taking over my sewing table.

Halloween Cats.

Oprah's the outgoing one, it only took her about a day before she was out and exploring the spare bedroom and she sounds like a stampede on the dining room ceiling during dinner. Here she is interviewing Bisbee.Bisbee isn't quite sure what to make of all this kitten business and is vehemently avoiding the spare bedroom on his surveillance duties around the house. (He's in charge of security.)

Are you talking to me?

Dr. Phil is the Descartes of cats, he's a thinker. He contemplates quantum physics and string theory, he hones Sartes' doctrine on existentialism and sympathises with the Zapatistas. In his mind he writes letters urging congress to free Mumia, bring peace to the Middle East and find a cure for the common cold. He is currently strategizing a global economic recovery plan.

Project 52 (17 of ?)

2008-10-27T10:22:00.002Z

Everyone must take time to sit and watch the leaves turn. ~Elizabeth Lawrence

Today

2008-10-26T12:16:00.002Z

Today I'm feeling inspired by this photo. Are these birds not the cutest thing you've ever seen? I found them here at Spool, complete with instructions and am printing off the templates as we speak! Next up, these lovely coasters by the long thread.....

Rural Grafitti

2008-10-26T11:36:00.002Z

The Last Days of Summer

2008-10-26T11:17:00.007Z

Notes from a late summer day out in Brighton

In the Elephant Topiary Garden

Fat Boy Slim show

Early Morning, Early September....

2008-10-26T10:40:00.001Z

It was one of those perfect English autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life. ~P.D. James

I haven't been sleeping well lately. I don't know what to attribute it to, but I tend to wake up before the sun comes up. Which isn't really that early considering our latitude and the time of year....

This time, I awoke to a perfectly crisp autumn morning. I slid out of bed careful not to wake the G or the furry Bisbeast sleeping at the foot of the bed, and headed out into the fresh autumnal sunshine for an early morning walk.

I wasn't the only one with the same idea and I came across these guys as well. I love the long shadows that early morning and late afternoon have to offer. Here's evidence of all the rain we've had lately.
And the first of the autumn leaves to make an appearance.
...And creatures large and small.This is one of the posts I never got around to putting up back in September when the pics were taken. Better late than never, right? Forgive me?

Project 52 Revisited

2008-10-17T10:35:00.000+01:00

Photo Taken 12 October 2008

Bittersweet October. The mellow, messy, leaf-kicking, perfect pause between the opposing miseries of summer and winter. ~Carol Bishop Hipps

Lunch Break Update

2008-10-15T12:07:00.004+01:00

Hi. Greetings from my place of employment. Can you believe that THIS is where I work! How lucky am I?

Over lunch (orange scented couscous with chicken and almonds - yum.) I've been enjoying the autumn glory here and here and feeling inspired to do a bit more of my own exploration through the camera lens.

I also want to urge you to pick up The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. What a cool book. I'm particularly enamoured by the idea of communicating with dogs only through posture and sign language - a language invented on an isolated farm in most-northern Wisconsin, no less.

That's about it for this lunch break. Talk soon!

Remember me?

2008-10-14T12:18:00.003+01:00

Just hangin out
Originally uploaded by TheQueenBean

I bet you're wondering if I fell off the face of the Earth. Man, life got busy for me over the past few weeks. School started three weeks ago and I've been wiped off my feet with lesson planning and photocopying. You know how it is.

The weather's been better the past couple of weeks and every waking second is spent trying to synthesize enough vitamin D to get through the long and impending winter months. I've made up my mind to live more and sleep less this winter.

I've even made myself a list of Things I Want To Do. I split it into a timeline of This Week, This Month, In Three Months, Before Next Year, In 3 to 5 Years, and In My Lifetime. Sounds ambitious, don't it? An excerpt:

In 3 to 5 years, I would like to:

Have visited most of the countries in Europe
Volunteer to help with the 2012 London Olympics
Complete a Masters Degree in Education
Return to North America to live
Be credit-card-debt-free
Have a better relationship with my mind-body - explore spirituality?
Have and raise a child/children
Complete a Triathlon
Finally begin writing that novel that's been spinning round my head the past three years
Finish a quilt.....

You get the idea.

I'm listening a lot to Sera Cahoone, Fleet Foxes and My Morning Jacket. Resurrecting Lucinda Williams and Gillian Welch. Wanting to hit the road with Jeff Tweedy.

I'm taking The Life In The UK test this week and reading my handbook: A journey to citizenship to jump through the seemingly endless hoops that being an ex-pat requires.

I'm taking my Driving License test at the end of the month.

Bisbee has a gaping hole on his head - battle scars from The Cat Fight Kitchen. Feral cats have figured out how to get in to the house through the cat flap and our kitchen has been showdown central. Another round of antibiotics for the Bisbeast and live traps for the Ferals.

The G started his new job in public health this week. Yay! I interviewed and didn't get a full time job teaching here at the college, but try and try again.

That's about it from here. I'll load some more recent pics up soon. I promise. XO, Bee

Heath or Heather?

2008-09-09T18:05:00.004+01:00

I can never remember which is the summer one - heath or heather? I have a sneaking suspicion its heath in the summer, but all I can hear in my head is that old Sonic Youth ditty - the bull in the heather...... Anyway, whichever it was was in full bloom when we hit the Peak District a couple weekends ago.
It was as if the mountains were laid to rest under a lavender blanket. Here we are, trying not to get blown away.

Copy cat.

Here's me, log rolling down the last bit of the descent. My legs were like rubber after a summer of convalescence, I'm back to jelly legs. You'd do it too and you know it.

I got a kick out of how idyllic the place was. Just get a load of this typical Derbyshire courtyard.Masochists that we are, not only did we hike up the Kinder Scout plateau, we went nuts on a bike ride around Derwent Water the next day on aching legs- 17 miles in all, but more of the pretty heath-heather background and the enormous slice of chocolate cake at the Woodbine Cafe at the end of the trail made it all worth it.

The Siamese Sunflower and Other Gardening Disasters

2008-09-08T14:22:00.006+01:00

There must be something in the water. Speaking of things not going exactly as planned in the garden, have I mentioned that I lost the complete crop of tomatoes to tomato blight? It's so depressing! They were just starting to turn a scrumptious looking red and within about three days all 10 plants started turning black and withering away.

I had this bright idea that I wanted to grow my own pickling cucumbers and make gherkins, but despite a good showing of flowers, only got one cucumber!! Here he is in all his glory...With a little help from the farmer's market, there's no shortage of summer bounty on the table. The three colour zucchini is coming up trumps and we've got quite a few sugar snap peas as well. That photo below made a kick ass tofu stirfry!! Have you had romanesco cauliflower? It's the green geometric one shown below. It tastes like extra cauliflowery cauliflower. Mmmm.

As Busy As A...

2008-09-08T14:12:00.006+01:00

And I'm not the only one.... Summer's grinding to a halt and with the onset of autumn comes a boat load of work to get going for the upcoming school year. Sorry I've been so quiet on the blog, but you know how it goes....
I've missed you guys! I'll make a sincere effort to post more often. See you soon. xx Bee

Go Team GB?!!

2008-08-11T13:38:00.004+01:00

Personally, I'm obsessed with the Olympics. There's just something about seeing sports you never get to see in your everyday normal life. Take the triple jump, for example. Or the pommel horse. Or fencing. Ping Pong. Archery. Synchronized Swimming. When else do you get a chance to see these kinds of things? I really can't wait until 2012, what a once in a lifetime experience to watch crazy fools cycle round a cereal bowl in the velodrome. I'm stoked.

The thing I don't really get is how blaze' the Brits are about the games. Take this opinion piece entitled Go on, admit it, Beijing is boring. Let's call off 2012 in this weekend's Observer - the paper I almost religiously read every Sunday. So far, I think this pretty accurately reflects the attitude I've come across here this first week of the Games. I'm excited, I try and talk to my co-workers, friends and even the check-out girl at the store and they simply shrug their shoulders and say something like, I'm not really bothered about it. What? You're not bothered? But it's the Olympics! I plead. TV coverage is limited to daytime (while everyone's at work) and live coverage in the wee hours overnight. There's only a one-hour recap in prime time on BBC1 - which simply shows the heats that Team GB were involved in and not much else. It's really disappointing for a big fan like myself.

What's Happening in the Kitchen Garden...

2008-08-09T10:43:00.010+01:00

I've always had a thing for butterflies....

I've been threatening you for ages with the tour of our kitchen garden. It's my first attempt at raising vegetables, especially from seeds, (and smuggled back from the US no less!) and I have to admit I approached it a little unconventionally by planting all the veg in the borders mixed in with the more traditional flower beds. Feverfew among the marigolds

It's been super successful so far and we currently have courgettes (Zucchini) coming out of our ears.Looking toward the end of the garden. Courgettes, corn, then euphorbia, tomatoes, carrots, radishes, blackberries, cucumbers, and pumpkin. Whew.

Courgette (Zucchini) blossoms

And speaking of ears. Look at the corns bloom! Amazing that each of those little flowers will be a corn kernel when it grows up. Yummy.

These little ganzanias make me happy.

Look! There's some sugar snap peas among the nasturtiums and dahlias. Can you spot the swiss chard?Stargazer Lily.

My lilies were a complete disaster. I had red lily beetle pretty badly and they completely decimated the lily crop. I only got 2 flowers from about 8 plants!

Here's looking back at the house through the tomatillos and even more tomatoes. What on Earth am I going to do with all those tomatillos? Salsa verde, anyone?

This is looking back at the house. Note the inviting hammock complete with lap cat.I'm convinced that Warwickshire must be the slug capital of England. I've been trying to get lettuce leaves going for the past 7 or 8 months and only ever got a half eaten leaf or two. I've had much more luck planting leaves in pots, starting seeds every three weeks or so in order to always have some fresh lettuce on the go.
This is the potting shed and shady sitting area at the farthest end of the garden. You walk under this archway dripping with honeysuckle and climbing roses to enter, but for some reason I didn't take a picture of it.
We haven't really set up the sitting area yet, we only just moved in about a month ago.... But I did plant a sunflower garden along the wall. Here's a closer look at the first sunflower of the year!
And finally, a little taste of our daily bounty.

The best thing ever

2008-08-09T10:32:00.004+01:00

He emerges from the study where he's been finishing a project for work all weekend.
Him: That band is the best thing ever.
Me: What band?
Him: This band, the one you've been playing on repeat all day.
Me: I thought I was the best thing ever.
Him: Who is this?
Me: Fleet Foxes. Zoe loaned me the CD. Dreamy, no?
Him: Like a cross between My Morning Jacket and Midlake, but more mature. Better.
Me: With a dash of CSN&Y style harmonies. More hymnal like.
Him: Yeah. Hymnal. The best thing ever.

Making stufff: the 'and her bird can sing... 'throw pillow

2008-08-03T19:24:00.006+01:00

It was Zoe's birthday yesterday and to celebrate I threw together this little beauty. It's my first attempt at proper quilting - I mean with a traditional pattern - the log cabin. The results turned out to be anything but traditional.
I'm completely obsessed with the idea now and have already set about cutting up all the fabric I can get my hands on into these little 2 1/2 inch strips.
Oh and the embroidery on the back! I just love this little bird, inspired by one I saw in Doodle Stitching by Aimee Ray- a book I've mentioned before here on the blog and another book I just can't help being inspired by. Go out and get it now, even if you've never embroidered before - it is positively overflowing with simple yet stunning designs that can be infinitely used over and over again in a hundred different contexts. Check out her latest work here.
(Tweet.)
And for dessert.....
There is nothing happier than birthday cupcakes, don't you think?

Home Is Where The Heart Is

2008-07-31T14:29:00.013+01:00

photos from my visit to the Victoria lily house at Kew Gardens, London last summer

Memory.

I must have been about 6 when I finally got round to asking my mom about where babies come from. She said later that she'd been preparing that speech for years, she wanted to paint a realistic picture, didn't want to be too explicit but still wanted to avoid the birds-bees metaphor and make no mention of the stork at all. She and my father had discussed it at length and decided to be honest. So on the big day that I finally popped the question, my mom made me a big cup of hot chocolate, sat me down and began to tell me the tale she had prepared. I wish I could remember any part of it, but in truth I wasn't really listening to her carefully planned speech because I was too anxious for her to finish the story so that I could ask my true burning question: "So, where do volcanoes come from then?"

My mom admitted to me over a glass of white in her back garden hot tub last spring that she'd never felt so deflated. All this build up and the preparation and planning, heated discussions with my father to decide what information would be included and what would be introduced as I got a little older in order to fully explain to their first born the beauty of life and of love. In the end, all I really was concerned with was the nature of volcanoes. Her bubble had burst.

I'm pretty sure my body's been hijacked. All I can think about these days is having a child of my own. Everytime there's a kid on tv, walking on the sidewalk hand in hand with his mom, or when I get the rare chance to talk with my nieces or nephews on the phone - something in my heart swells just a bit. I never thought I'd be that girl. I've always been more interested in volcanoes, or seabirds or making things. I didn't even really expect to get married, truth be told, nor have I ever had any intention of living a conventional life.

I sit in my little country house, sewing machine on the dining room table, fabric strewn about in summer colors, swept aside to make room for the laptop while I type this. There's a fresh salad ready for dinner when my husband comes home from his business trip to London, adorned with vegetables picked from the garden I've grown mainly from seed. Sorry, Bee, what part of this life is unconventional exactly?
Shift.

It's a shift in my thinking. My lifestyle. My sense of who I am. I get letters from my family that still remains in Alaska with their tales of caribou hunts and fishing trips. Uncle Dave's moonlighting as a 'bear guard' for the builders of the new gas pipeline and cousin Becky killed her first moose. This after having cleared her own land, falling and honing the trees herself, building her log cabin and all it's intricacies including the plumbing and electricity. She makes beaver mittens and runs a trapline for wolverines and lynx for fur to make clothes, boots and hats from. Because it's that cold in the winter. She got married this spring and now there's a baby on the way.

Could that have been me? Stocking my freezer full of salmon and moose meat for the upcoming winters? I'm reading a book my mom gave me now called "Merle's Door" Have you read it? It's about a guy and his dog and this fabulous no fences lifestyle they live in Wyoming, where their well written days are filled with skiing in the backcountry, hiking in the Rockies and hunting elk or pheasants for their freezers. It's got me thinking a lot about where I've come from and the 180 I've taken since then. My husband puts on a suit and tie every morning. I don't think there's a man in the entirety of my family history that knows how to tie a windsor knot. I often wear heels when I go out or sometimes even to work. This straightforward conventional life that I live now seemed so exotic to me when I was looking at it from the outside. When I was imagining what my life with the G would be like during all those years that we were thousands of miles apart and there was all that longing in my heart.I'm torn. I love my life here, my husband, my job, our cat - but I long for the freedom of my childhood wilderness and open spaces. There's no wilderness to get lost in here. I used to hike sometimes in the backcountry of Denali or in the deep into the North Coast's Redwood forests and wonder when the last time someone stood on the same spot as me or more honestly, I'd wonder IF someone stood on this spot before me. Here I think of all the thousands who've walked these roads before me. This is Shakespeare's county you know, where our summer breezes and winter storms have been immortalized in his prose. There's a building in our village that was in the Doomsday book (an 11th century census.) Before them there were Romans and Celts and Vikings and the builders of stone circles and bronze-age tools. Every tree alive today has been planted by someone's grandfather. Or great great grandfather. I live on what remains of a plum orchard - I wonder who's orchard was it?

Contrast.
When I was a young girl I lived in the house my mother and father built on the side of a mountain overlooking the Eagle River valley. I'd watch moose wander the riverbank below looking miniature because of the distance, I'd listen to wolves calling each other mournfully across the valley as I drifted off to sleep in the glow of the midnight sun, every morning I'd count the little white specks that were the Dall Sheep so high up on the mountain top above us. Now I live on someone's abandoned orchard. There was a brick maker here before him. Southam, the village 2 miles down the road, was an important layover on the journey from the textile markets of Coventry down to the storefronts of London and for hundreds of years, until the last 80 or so years, and the advent of car manufacturing, the humble village of 5,000 was the largest village in the county. The air is simply abuzz with history and it's magical, it is.Though I'm not convinced that I want to raise children in the context we live in now. England is an island the size of Oregon, jam packed with 60 million people. I want my kids to know the freedom of wild open spaces and hear the distant cries of coyotes as they drop off into dream. I want them to get filthy with fish slime from the trout pond or skin their knees climbing trees. I'd like to be able to walk them up to the highest point around and not see any sign of anyone else all the way out the horizon. I want them to know about skinny dipping in a mirrored lake on a hot summer's day and of digging up razor clams on the beach at low spring tide and of building snowmen in the yard after a big snow.

None of these things can be done here..... and I worry that my well-dressed man wouldn't cope well with the loss of structure. He is a chronic hand-washer, afterall, as most good English children are.* He's a good little camper though, my guy, as our adventures in the North Cascades, Vancouver Island, Eagle River Valley, Los Picos de Europa and around Tucson have proven. And he's eager to learn and do and experience more. Think he can throw in the tie?

*when I taught outdoor education here, I was astounded by the number of young kids who refused to hold the toad that we found under a log in the wood or were too afraid of getting their hands dirty to reach into the pool of water for a closer look at the stickleback we'd collected in our mist net.

Lavender Brown (and a recipe)

2008-07-30T18:45:00.011+01:00

Did you see it? The new trailer for the upcoming Harry Potter movie was shown for the first time on BBC breakfast this morning.... It actually looks like it might be worth watching. I don't know about you, but I've read and re-read that series of books, but have been disappointed by every one of the movies I've seen. Granted, one of them was dubbed in Czech....

In honor of my favorite name in the series, Lavender Brown - only because that would be my porn name, I introduce my new favorite cupcake. (Favorite? Is that even possible when it comes to cupcakes?) Lavender & Honey Cupcakes. Sounds mad, doesn't it? Who knew you could eat lavender? I've lately become a little obsessed with growing things that I can eat. I'll give you a tour through my garden as soon as I can figure out how to upload photos - techno gremlins again. All will be revealed, don't you fret.

The marriage of lavender and honey is remarkable, sweet with a little tingle of tartness. Divine. If you can find lavender honey (worth the hunt) it will enhance the flavor even more.

Lavender & Honey Cupcakes - What you'll need:

for the cupcakes:

2 cups (225g/8oz) unsalted butter
2 cups (225g/8oz) caster sugar
2 cups (225g/8oz) self-raising flour
4 eggs

1 tsp vanilla
for the icing:
1 200 g/7 oz package of cream cheese
1 1/2 cups icing sugar
1 tbsp honey
Blue food coloring

2 tbsp dried lavender flowers

1. Turn up Ray LaMontagne's Till the Sun Turns Black, get swept away in that first dreamy refrain. I especially like to pretend I'm the girl he sings to with the country mouth so plain and her skirt lifted to her knees as she walks through the garden rows barefoot and laughing.... Get a hold of yourself, girl, there are cupcakes to be made!

2. Mmmm. Cupcakes. Preheat the oven to 400 F/200 C/gas mark 6. Ready your muffin tin by placing 18 baking cases in the cups.

3. Combine all the cupcake ingredients in a medium bowl and beat with an electric mixer until smooth and pale, about 2 to 3 minutes.

4. Spoon the batter into the cases, filling 2/3 the way full and bake for 20 minutes. Cool the cupcakes in the tins for about 5 minutes before removing them to cool on a rack.
For the icing, beat the cream cheese and icing sugar in a medium bowl with an electric mixer until light and creamy. Beat in the honey and a few drops of the food coloring. Stir in half of the lavender flowers. Spread the icing onto the cupcakes and sprinkle with the reserved lavender flowers.

Makes 1 1/2 dozen yummy summer cupcakes.

D is for Didn't I Post Something Here Last Week? (or I want to be your Emmylou)

2008-07-24T13:58:00.010+01:00

Uh.... I don't know what happened, officer. I swear I posted something just the other day, but where oh where could it be? I've been forced to blog from work as we don't have the broadband set up in the new house yet. (good ole Sky lost our order!) So I blame the college IT gremlins.

Speaking of technological gremlins, on the way to work this morning with the i-pod on shuffle I heard the following sequence: Bright Eyes' Land Locked Blues, Bob Dylan's One More Cup of Coffee, Lucinda Williams' Return of the Grievous Angel cover and (if you haven't picked up the Emmylou Harris thread through this yet) Gillian Welch's I Dream a Highway was next, with the line that pointed it all out to me 'Now you be Emmylou and I'll be Gram....' Anyway, how does the i-pod know? And now I've been fantasizing about ditchin my desk job and hitting the road like Emmylou all morning.

Haven't you heard? We moved two doors down. Daft, I know, but there is a good reason for it. Promise. The move went smoothly and we managed to get out of number 5 in just a couple of days and are now slowly settling in to number 3.

We finally have summer sunshine here at long last. It was 80 yesterday, woo! Went for a good long hike over the weekend in the Malverns - will post pics soon.

To Buy or Not To Buy.... A Question For You

2008-07-10T14:19:00.003+01:00

I've got a moral dilemma on my hands. The credit crunch is hitting our family pretty hard. You think you got it bad in the US, but gas here is like $12 freaking dollars a gallon!! Our electric bill was 500 pounds more expensive than the same period last year. Five Hundred Pounds!! That's like $1000!! And everything from grocery bills and the recent collapse of my car's reliability have hit my pocket pretty hard. It doesn't help that I've been on half pay since I've been illin' and having to take so much time off work lately.

The G and I split expenses - he pays the utilities and council tax and I pay for groceries, cat supplies and household/gardening items. (How do you do it in your family?) The G suggested that I start shopping at Asda (a Wal-Mart subsidiary) to save money on our food bills. I don't know about you but I've been morally opposed to Wal-Mart's policies and politics for just as long as I can remember. They moved into Aberdeen (Washington) while I was in high-school up the road in Elma. Slowly but surely, every small Mom & Pop store in a 100 mile radius was put out of business because they weren't able to compete with Wal-Mart's low low prices. Even the marginally big supermarkets started to cave. So all those Mom and Pop's were forced to go to work for Wal-Mart where they were paid minimum wage and no longer "eligible" for important benefits like health insurance or overtime pay. Not to mention the sourcing of their products: they will always favor the cheap distant provider rather than the farm down the road. (See this news item in the UK's the Guardian newspaper) And who makes all those cheap clothes? It's a story that has played out all over the country, and all over the world for that matter, I'm sure.

In one of many heated discussions on the matter, this time while entertaining our lovely neighbor Zoe, The G and Zoe argued that it's Asda, and Wal-Mart only purchased them a few years ago, so it's not really Wal-Mart. Though that doesn't make much difference to me - a tiger changing it's stripes and all that - I caved. I thought what would it hurt to give it a go? Maybe they're right, shouldn't I check out Asda if it will save me money so I can spend it on fun things like fabric or yarn or border plants instead? So I ventured in to the superstore and filled my trolley with the items on my list and then a whole bunch more stuff that wasn't on the list. When I got to the checkout stand, I was in a mild panic thinking I really blew my budget with all the extras I threw in, but it turned out to be a whole lot cheaper than my regular, more reserved, weekly shop.

So, what's a girl to do? Times are hard and I'm broke as broke can be - but can I really compromise my moral objections to the corporate cancer that is Wal-Mart just to save some dough? What would you do?

Rootin Tootin Two Step Slow Cookin Chipotle Chicken Chilli

2008-07-09T13:28:00.005+01:00

Annie, get yer gun! The summer rains haven't given up the ghost here in the British Midlands and the Met Office has already issued flood warnings. Typical! We're moving out of our house this weekend, would you expect anything less? Since we're going to be real busy this week, I thought a giant pot of chilli was the answer to quick and easy meals for the week eaten from the floor while leaning against a stack of cardboard boxes.

My sister famously won the Firemen's Chilli Cook-off last 4th of July in Eagle River, Alaska. I don't mean to name drop or anything, but I've got some serious ties to renowned chilli makers and ain't it your lucky day, sugar, because I'm passing this little ditty on to you. This is the low fat version using one of the best wedding gifts we received, the mighty slowcooker.It's not just the slow cooker that makes this recipe quick & easy, most of the ingredients come from cans. Just watch your step when the cat comes running when he hears the sweet sweet sound of the can opener.

Rootin Tootin Two Step Slow Cooker Chipotle Chicken Chilli
4 skinless, boneless chicken breasts
4 cans black beans
2 cans chopped tomatoes
2 cans kernel corn
one onion, coarsely chopped
3 tsp of minced garlic from a jar
2 green peppers, chopped
2 red peppers, chopped
jalepeno peppers seeded and finely chopped to taste
4 tbsp chipotle chilli powder, divided
2 tbsp ground cumin
2 tbsp ground corriander
2 tbsp onion powder
2 tbsp garlic powder
salt & pepper to taste
crushed red pepper to taste

serves 2 for several days!

1. Dress appropriately for the job at hand. That means dust off those cowboy boots you spent a fortune on on your last trip to Tucson and hardly ever wear, and don't forget the requisite hat. Turn the kitchen radio to the country station or something else appropriately twangy. I chose Ryan Adams' Heartbreaker, but I leave that decision up to you.

2. Set aside the chicken breasts for now. Dust off the slow cooker and begin opening the tins of beans, corn, tomatoes - tenderly shoving the fur shark at your feet aside - and adding them to the cooker. Chop the onion, pepper and garlic and add to the mix. Add the rest of the ingredients, excluding about 2 tbsp of chipotle chilli powder - you'll need that later.

3. Lay chicken breasts on top of the chilli mixture and dust with the remaining chipotle chilli powder. The chicken in the picture came from a pack of 'mini filets' fished from the depths of chest freezer. Are they selling these in the US? Mini filets? (You pronounce the 't' so it rhymes with skillet. Silly Brits)

4. Set the timer on you slow cooker for at least 6 hours and go down to your local quilt shop and dream.

A note about adding chilli peppers to the slow cooker. Fresh chillies or those from a jar seem to mellow in the slow cooker, where dried chillies seem to gather strength and amplify their heat. My poor husband has been the guinea pig in this experiment, and I've watched the steam pour out his ears when I thought I was being nice and tried using dried chillies thinking they wouldn't be so hot for his delicate palate. Bless.
5. Just before serving pull the chicken out and shred it in a separate bowl. (Didn't I say there'd be two steps? I wasn't just talking about the dancing you'll do when you discover how tasty this recipe is...) I find it pulls apart really easily using a couple of forks pulled in opposite directions. This is why this recipe is best prepared in the slow cooker, the chicken just becomes so much more tender and juicy than if it was simply boiled in a pot for an hour or two.

6. Mix the chicken back into the chilli and this would be a good place to add some shredded monterrey jack cheese if your gall bladder can handle it and you really hanker for a rich bowl of chilli. I left out the cheese on mine, but topped my bowl with sliced avocado and low fat creme fraische (or sour cream) and devoured it with tortilla chips. Yum.

The Great British Summer

2008-07-07T10:21:00.005+01:00

I swear this will be one of those photos that makes it's way into your inbox in the form of a some forward or another.

We went to a concert in the park at Warwick Castle over the weekend, to enjoy some fireworks set to a performance from the Welsh National Opera. It was meant to be all strawberries and champagne, smoked salmon canapes and naughty little treats like sausage rolls and pork pies. The skies, however, had other plans.

The inlaws, while the night was still young.

Never have I been so unprepared for the torrential downpour that was to ensue. This coming from a former wildlife biology technician in Alaska (for god's sake!) and formidable national park 'parkie' in some of America's most notorious unpredictable weather hotspots. I turn up in a cotton dress and flip flops with two bottles of red and nary an inclination as to what the weather report has to predict, it's a little embarrassing. It was sunny all day, why would I expect it to be anything else.

Me and the G, before the skies really let loose.

It struck me that night, just how much that outdoorsy side of me has disappeared since moving to Britain. It's not that the British don't go hiking or 'hill-walking' as it's referred to here, there's just something so less wild about backpacking from pub to pub. I remember thinking how posh it was to sleep in one of the camping shelters on the Appailachan trail, compared to the forest clearings of West coast campgrounds. Here you get bed and breakfast! Tents come in floral patterns or cowgirl motifs and are used solely to flaunt the latest festival fashions, not for roughing it in the backcountry. I'm just not as hardy as I used to be. I've gone soft in my old age!

What am I on about? This was a concert, not a bloody expedition!! At any rate, here's a view once it started to get dark and the fireworks kicked off. We ended up leaving about 3/4 the way through. It was a nice performance, but the hot cups of coffee and the stylish Warwick Castle Ponchos we bought didn't work to warm us and all our teeth were all a-chattering.

As Seen On TV

2008-07-01T13:50:00.006+01:00

I reckon being ill is one of the great pleasures of life, provided one is not too ill and is not obliged to work till one is better. ~Samuel Butler, The Way of All Flesh, 1903

And maybe he's on to something. This morning I stayed in my bath robe until noon, reading the latest Mark Haddon book while stretched languorously on my bed in a stream of June sunshine. Feeling particularly and unusually tired, I moseyed downstairs, lazily flicked on the telly and plopped on the sofa to watch an old episode of ER while my tummy lurched and burned. It was the one where Mark Green rented that beach house in Hawaii after he realized his brain tumor was terminal. I hadn't seen that one before and for some reason when the tears came, they wouldn't stop. I feel more than a bit silly admitting that here, but the part where he wanted to write letters to his daughters for them to open at their graduation or on their wedding day really got to me. I guess it reminded me of the way my own father didn't get a chance to finish his Christmas cards.

There was a question about whether my father's death was intentional. He had metastatic colon cancer and at the end, he was in a lot of pain and taking a lot of medications, it would have been easy to lose track. There was a brief inquest by the medical examiner, but ultimately ruled out suicide by means of my father's half finished stack of Christmas cards. When my sister and I were collecting his things from the house, we came across one card that was actually in progress, pen laid out across the paper and then we knew for sure. He was the kind that sent a card out every year to everyone he'd ever met.

I always wondered if he had intended to write the same kind of letters like the good Dr. Green on TV, my father was so meticulous about so many other things surrounding his death that it always surprised me that the letters never surfaced.

I tried to remember the last time I cried and couldn't. It must have been years, probably not since around the time that my Dad died. It was that breathless kind of sobbing that leaves you covered in snot and so very thankful that you're alone. I cried for my Dad at first, but then it turned into something else. Something shifted. A letting go. A release of nervousness over my own health and the culmination of frustration and embarrassment at feeling so fucking miserable all the time.

In 45 minutes, the G will be taking me into the hospital, again. This time the doctors will be putting the camera down my throat and into my belly in hopes of discovering the cause of my misery. I'm nervous, I've been fasting all day and am feeling tired. I hope they find something and I hope they don't. It's a strange dichotomy.

Summer Solstice Soliloquy

2008-06-21T11:48:00.007+01:00

The first day of summer comes on dreary and grey in the English midlands, much to match my mood as of late. What's it like where you are? I'm thinking of solstices past in Seattle's Fremont district, watching the joyous parade over a pint of Hoegaarden from a cozy beer garden and marveling with love for my community. Of Alaskan all nighters where it never really gets dark, but maybe a bit dim where calling in the summer from the dizzying heights of railroad bridges over Denali's great cravasses or scooping up the first of the summer's kittiwake chicks on Middleton Island seem so remote and removed from my life now. Of dipping my toes in the Atlantic for the first time on Mount Desert Island in Maine, the summer I discovered hidden swimming holes, the pure delight of licking my fingertips after a dinner on the pier at the lobster pound and the heavy heart of a love affair that falls apart before your eyes.

I'm feeling centered and settled and more engaged with who I am now than at any other point in the crooked path leading me up to where I stand. I admit, however, that I'm finding illness disheartening and this week I've been feeling more and more discouraged. I woke in the night from nightmares of being disemboweled, to find that I am in fact being scooped out by some unknown and creeping pain. I feel rotten. My tummy is in knots and there are moments in which I feel I'm being torn apart and it drops me to my knees. When that eases up there's the lingering and somewhat more sinister burning fist of pain punching at the base of my ribs, like a stitch in my side from running or swimming too hard. It's always there, I can disguise it with painkillers or distract it with exercise, but it remains, lurking, just under the surface. The doctors tell me there are only more invasive tests to be done, the ever pragmatic and optimistic GI specialist I see once a week regards the new medication regime as something to look forward to instead.If you've been wondering why I've been so quiet on the blog of late, this is your explanation. Though, in theory, I've had more time than usual, what with the being off work and all, but I'm finding it difficult to think positively and I didn't want to drag you down with me. I've been vaguely productive, what with nearly finishing the binding off of my first ever quilt, the transporting of my veg garden and planting out of the greenhouse into the garden of the house next door to which we'll be moving in four weeks time, of packing and cleaning for said move, and the tinkering with this and flirting with the idea of starting a home business and the posting of flyers around town and neighboring villages. None of which seemed particularly interesting enough to post on this here blog.

The idea of a blog as a sort of journal teases me. I set this blog up with the idea that it would be a nice way for me to keep my friends and family back home up to date with what I've been up to, a register of the things created before they were inevitably given away or eaten up, or else a curiosity to anyone who fancies moving abroad and wants to know a little more about life on this side of the pond. The blog as a diary or confessional is something I really wanted to avoid, my neighbor insists that the minute my blog becomes too personal she wouldn't want to read it anymore. I think she's on to something. And so, with the onset of summer, the turning of a new leaf, this post will be a one-off and I'll try not to moan too much about my tummy from here on out.

Better Late Than Never

2008-06-11T11:49:00.005+01:00

Nearly three weeks ago, I got tagged with a meme by the Greenish Lady at what else but the Greenish Lady blog, follow the link to check her out. My first, I must add, so that makes me a meme virgin. I haven't decided how I feel about the whole meme business. It's wonderful to be acknowledged and particularly by someone I haven't met in person and it seems a great way to initiate contact with the blogging community, something I've been on the outside of looking in for way too long now. My apologies for taking so long to respond, another hospital stay is to blame, I'm afraid.

So here goes... my first meme.

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.

The book I'm reading at the moment was one my mom gave me on my recent trip back home, it's called The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly and it's truly a joy to read. I'm not sure if joy is the right word, because it's a sort of twisted and graphic and magical and poetic and dark and a little disturbing, but it's the kind of book that you can become completely absorbed in and not have to think too much about. I love a little magic in a tale, so this is one I'd recommend.

David, a boy of 12, has just lost his mother to a "creeping, cowardly thing, a sickness that ate away from her from the inside..." and whose father has re-married and now had a new baby. While having difficulty coping with the change and after a particularly nasty row with his new step mother, David is magically transported to a otherwordly type of place, a land where fairy tales are born, where lost children boiled in pots and wolves with teeth that gnash can stand upright and speak. He's lost in this fantastic land and must find his way back to the real world.

While on this journey,....'Suddenly, it seemed as if David was surrounded by short, unhappy men muttering about ''rights" and "liberties" and having enough of "this sort of thing". They were all filthy, and they all wore hats with broken bells. One of them kicked David in the shin.'

It isn't a particularly exciting or controversial quote. What about you, have you got something better?

Nightingale Lap Quilt : In Progress

2008-06-06T12:15:00.004+01:00

My first quilt! I've got the top finished now, I've just got to start with the actual quilting bit....

Transatlanticism (or follow your heart or how to jump through the hoops of the UK Visa system)

2008-05-31T15:07:00.010+01:00

It's been nearly two years since I turned up in the UK with little more than the rucksack on my back and the overstuffed suitcase full of English grammar books and lesson plans from my year teaching English in Eastern Europe. The G and I had met two years prior to that, we knew that we wanted to be together and were completely and utterly frustrated by the long distance love affair we'd been suffering through. As an American, I wasn't able to work legally in the UK (or anywhere in Western Europe (the EU) for that matter) and we were faced with a mounting pile of paperwork and confusing immigration laws and a sinking feeling that there was no other way but marriage to solve the mess we were in. So in the end, he said 'what the hell, baby, let's get hitched.'

I don't mean to suggest for a minute that we wouldn't have gotten married if not pressured into it by our geography and border control, but it certainly happened a lot sooner than either of us would have ideally wanted it to be. I think it caught my friends and family a little off guard, truth be told, when I left Seattle bound for a teaching job in Poland in November and returned a year later with an engagement ring and wedding bells in my ears. Nevertheless, we managed to pull it off in the end and I'm happy to report that neither of us regret rushing into it to this day.
Thinking back on that six months or so that I was here in England, not able to work and trying desperately to find my feet while wading through the ocean of information about work permits and fiancee visas and marriage visas cloaked in codewords like K-1's and INF4's and mysterious terminology such as 'indefinite leave to remain' and 'present and settled' and asking myself am I a 'highly skilled migrant worker'? is enough to make my head spin even now.

I thought I'd lay out what we did to sort through it all, so that maybe it'll make it just that much easier for someone else to figure it out should you find yourself in love with an Englishman (or woman). I'm about to get really specific so you may be a little bored, dear reader, if this stuff doesn't apply to you.I don't know it yet, but he's about to propose! There's champagne in it that backpack and everything!

The easiest way to accomplish marrying your beloved Brit, is to have the wedding in the States while he/she is visiting on their passport - the visa waiver programme gives UK residents 90 days in the US without any special permits and doesn't require any special visa to have a wedding in the States - then to return to England on a UK marriage visa.

The UK requires a special visa to have a wedding in Britain. This can take up to 6 months to obtain. You can also enter the country on a fiancee visa for 6 months- however you can't work and you still need the wedding visa to get married here. This is obviously an option, but an expensive one - keep in mind that each visa has a minimum fee of around 100 pounds sterling. Also US citizens are allowed 6 months in the UK without a visa anyway.

Note: I can only speak with any authority about how to marry and settle in Britain. I think settling in the US is whole lot more complicated and I am heartily postponing that mess for a few more years.

From the UK government website (www.ukvisas.gov.uk) :

You can obtain a marriage visa to settle in the UK if

you are legally married to each other or are in a civil partnership recognised in the UK
your husband, wife or civil partner is present and settled in the UK (see the next section)
you both intend to live together permanently as husband and wife or as civil partners
you have met each other before
you can support yourselves and any dependants without any help from public funds
you have suitable accommodation, which is owned or lived in only by you and your household, and where you and your dependants can live without any help from public funds
your husband, wife or civil partner is not under 18, and
you are not under 18.

Remember the key bit of information, you don't need a wedding visa to get married on US soil, so the next time your fiancee comes to visit make a quick trip to Vegas and have a drive through wedding in a pink cadillac. Next step; you've got to prove your love to The Man!! There are only three UK embassies in the US that process visas and they are located in New York, Chicago and L.A. You will need to schedule an immigration interview, you can do it online at the embassy website. It's very important that you keep all records of your relationship for your immigration interview - that means keep all those letters, e-mails, photos, cards, and add a couple of letters of support from family and friends just to be on the safe side. You will also need provide both of your passports though only the immigrant can attend the interview, bank statements for both of you to prove that you can survive in Britain without needing public assistance, any job offers and copies of your CV and diplomas to show you're employable, contracts from your landlord or copy of your property deed. Don't let the interview scare you, but do take it seriously. While I was in LA for mine, two other women were denied entry into the UK by the immigration office - so it can happen. Just make sure you have your ducks in a row and you'll be fine.

There are a couple of expat/travellers web forums that I found useful when I was researching how to do this marriage visa thing; easyexpat.com and justlanded.com where you'll find other people who are going through the same hair pulling process as you. Another informational website is globalvisas.com though stick to the government websites like the homeoffice.gov for the final say and to double check fees and everything.

This can be a really expensive process - it's not only the cost of moving overseas with all of my belongings, but the visas themselves are very expensive, not to mention the cost of flying to LA and holing up in a hotel for a few days while my passport was processed, and having to prove you have enough money in your bank account to live in Britain without recourse to public funds!! After 2 years, a landmark I am now approaching, I must apply for indefinite leave to remain which is fancy-talk for permanent residency and costs 510 pounds! After three years I can take the test to be naturalised as a British citizen and have dual citizenship which sounds so smarmy.

I'm sure most of this is nonsense for the casual reader of my blog, but if someone desperately seeking answers comes across it, I hope this helps! I remember finding comfort in learning that other couples managed to get through the other side, it's a stressful process, but well worth it in the end.

Biliary Blues (and a recipe for low fat chocolate zucchini cupcakes)

2008-05-31T06:19:00.006+01:00

So things haven't gone exactly to plan after my emergency gall bladder surgery nearly two months ago. There's some sort of mystery pain that has had me in and out of the hospital ever since. There are a couple of possible explanations - one being that there's a stone left somewhere in the ductwork in my liver and the other being something elusively called post-cholecystectomy syndrome which basically boils down to spasms of the ductwork in my liver. Bummer.

In the meantime, it means I've had a lot of time off work. One more reason to embrace being an expat in Britain: Sick Leave. Even in my first year of employment with the college, I've been given 1 month sick leave at full pay and another at half pay. After I complete the first year, it'll be 6 months of full pay and a year at half pay. Have you ever heard of such a luxury in the US? (Have you seen Michael Moore's 'Sicko' yet? It compares health care in the US with that in Britain, France and Cuba of all places. It's a really important and eye opening film. Do go out and watch it, will you?)

I've had to make some serious changes to my diet as well, since I'm absolutely not able to tolerate any fats without horrible pain and vomiting and nausea. Wonderful. You see, that's what bile does - breaks down fats. Now that my gall bladder's gone, there's no bile available to digest it with so it just makes me sick. That's actually been fairly easy to cope with when it comes to main meals, but desserts are another ball park altogether. So I've been experimenting....

Confidential to anyone who's dieting out there: this one's for you!

Fit and You Know It Chocolate Zucchini Cakes

1/2 cup olive oil
1 1/3 cup granulated/caster sugar
3 eggs
1/2 cup orange juice
1 tsp almond extract
2 1/2 cups all-purpose/plain flour
4 tbsp cocoa powder
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1 1/2 cups shredded zucchini/courgette
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup dessicated coconut

The thing about zucchini is that you can't even taste it once it's in a cake, but it adds so much moisture and texture to your cake you won't be able to stop yourself.

Preheat your oven to 350 F/170 C and turn on Regina Spektor's Begin to Hope CD and start bopping to Fidelity. While you're singing along, insert cupcake liners into your tin. In a large bowl, combine the oil, sugar, eggs, orange juice and almond extract. Beat well.

In a separate bowl combine the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, salt and cinnamon. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet ones. Mix well. Fold the zucchini, chocolate chips and coconut into the batter.

Fill the cupcake liners 3/4 the way full. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean.

For the Icing:
1 1/3 cup confectioner's/icing sugar
1/3 cup cocoa powder
1/4 cup fat free sour-cream
1/4 cup skim milk
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Combine all ingredients in a small bowl and whisk well with an electric mixer until smooth. If it's a little runny, you can add more icing sugar until you get the consistency you want. This will not be a hard set frosting, (there's no fat!!) so be prepared for it to run off the edges of your cakes or go with a less is more policy. Adorn with dried berries, hazelnuts and sunflower seeds and gobble greedily without guilt.

How To Make A Bad Day Better

2008-05-31T06:09:00.004+01:00

Step 1: Give that tummy a rub.Step 2: Get some dirt under your fingernails.

Step 3: Notice the things that go unnoticed.

Step 4: When all else fails, add chocolate.

Inspiration this Bank Holiday Monday

2008-05-26T17:10:00.004+01:00

He actually thinks he's helping.

I spoke too soon about all this sunshine and summer and eating al fresco business.... Man, what a crappy long holiday weekend. Giving me time for this bit of quilting - dueling quilt projects- that is. The blue one was started with my Mama, the quilt master, while I was in Tucson. I pulled it out when I got home and decided it was probably too hard for me - since I've never really sewn before and there's a lot of folding and circles involved. It's from the book Quiltagami! Origami inspired quilts. Fun.
Did I mention that my Mom gave me a sewing machine while I was visiting and I actually brought it back on the plane with us? Feeling a little guilty for not using the sewing machine that I hauled 6,000 miles yet, I started this little lap quilt instead that is inspired by the one in Doodle Stitching and will be embroidered with fun little birds and swirls. Looking out the window today and listening to my teeth chattering in the cold, I bought some down batting to keep my lap warm.

Project 52 (15 of 52)

2008-05-23T17:06:00.001+01:00

Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night.
~Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke

Postcards from Tucson

2008-05-14T13:07:00.005+01:00

Springing

2008-05-14T12:39:00.005+01:00

Languorous Lazy Summer Sunday Opulence (and a recipe for Lazygirl Luxury Linguini)

2008-05-11T12:48:00.009+01:00

One thing I love about these lazy summer Sundays is how late it stays light at night. We've got a sunset at around 9:00 these days, it's almost takes me back to those endless summer nights of my Alaskan childhood where it never got dark. Wait a second.... Summer? What's with all this glorious weather we've been having? England? Is that you?

We managed somehow to bring the sunshine home with us from Tucson. Record temperatures in the high 20's (80's to you and me) and in May! It seems England lusciously burst into full spring regalia while we were away. Mix one part torrential rains with one part unseasonably warm weather and Voila! Summer comes early. To celebrate I spoiled my husband with his favorite pasta dish for our patio dinner.
Have I mentioned how lazy I am when it comes to cooking in the summer? It's too hot to be in the kitchen, so this one's quick and easy enough for a weeknight. What you need:
Lazygirl Luxury Linguini

Your favorite pasta - I like Tagliatelle or Fetuccine with this one (but linguini sounded better in the title)
1 bunch asparagus
2 portabello mushrooms
1 zucchini (courgette)
2 cloves garlic (tsp pre-minced stuff)
1 tin crab meat
1 tbsp low fat cream cheese
splash white wine
olive oil

Turn on Alison Krauss' Lonely Runs Both Ways and prepare your veg. With lines like 'you're at your best with that ache in your chest and that worn out song that you play' or 'the people who love me ask me when I'm coming back to town and I say, quite frankly, when they stop building roads' you'll be singing along while your heart is quietly breaking. Anyway, back to preparing your veg:

My mom showed me this trick with asparagus to get the best out of it. That's right, make your asparagus work for you. If you hold a spear with an end in each hand and lightly bend it until it breaks, it will always separate at the toughest point - throw the tough, chewy ends in the compost heap and enjoy the tender tip bits with your pasta. (I prefer to steam my asparagus separately for this recipe, only because I find it gets too soft if I sautee it with the rest of the veg. Your choice.) Scrape out the gills of the mushrooms with a teaspoon - I find that if you scrape gently sideways, against the grain, the gills just peel easily away.

So you've got asparagus steaming and you're chopping the zucchini and mushrooms into bite size pieces. Meanwhile heat a bit of olive oil in a pan and add the garlic as soon as the oil starts to pop. Bring water to a boil, add the pasta. See why this is a weeknight special?

My Dad taught me this trick with pasta to keep the pot from overflowing. You just leave your grandmother's wooden spoon in the pot as it boils - the water's surface tension on the spoon prevents it from overflowing somehow. I don't really get it, but it seems to work. Wise old Dad.

Sautee the veg in the olive oil until the zucchini starts to brown and the mushrooms soften. For the sauce - add the entire tin of crab, including the juice to the pan. Then a glob of cream cheese and a splash of white wine. Mix well as the cream cheese starts to melt and bring to a slight bubble. Drain the pasta and mix it in, adding a little olive oil if it sticks. Add the asparagus and serve immediately.This recipe is best enjoyed on the patio on a hot summer's day with a nice glass of pinot grigio and fur shark looming in the background.

And for dessert..... Raspberry Love.

Add to the blender: fresh raspberries, a banana, plain fat free yogurt, a splash of milk, a splash of vanilla essence, and about a tbsp of cinnamon. Blend and enjoy!

Did you notice how low fat this meal is? The crab is what makes the pasta sauce taste so luxurious, the cream cheese is just there to turn it white so it looks like an alfredo or other decadent pasta sauce. (For even more decadence add extra cream cheese or sour cream/creme fraische and loads of yummy parmesan. ) This makes a good meal for those of you who've just had your gallbladder out and aren't able to tolerate any fats. Or those of you with IBS. And those of you trying to diet. And for the rest of you too. Enjoy.

Project 52 (14 of 52)

2008-05-10T12:35:00.000+01:00

Okay, now I can see a difference in our friend the oak tree. How spring has sprung. Do you see that Warwickshire Gold in the background?
Here's a better view. The whole of our county is a patchwork of gold and green. Beautiful.

B is for Beautiful

2008-04-21T10:08:00.007+01:00

I often like to pretend that no one I know actually reads this blog thing and that it is more of anonymous bit of whinging and reminiscing. Though more and more I'm realizing that most everyone who knows me in the real world has tracked this blog down (though you never comment! eh hem!) and I thought it was time I actually acknowledged that you're probably interested in what I've really been up to. Not all this making this and baking that mumbo jumbo.

So here's a photo my sister sent me recently that has knocked my socks off. How gorgeous are they?! Does anyone else find it a little strange that Zoe looks more like me than my sister does?

What else can I tell you? I'm leaving tomorrow for Tucson - Woo Hoo! I'll be there through the 1st and then head off to Seattle to catch up in a long overdue trip to my old stomping grounds. There's an old school BBQ revival planned, so if anyone got missed in the e-vites, please contact me and get yerself over there on Friday night!!

My surgery went well, I'm recuperating for the most part though a bit achy breaky here and there and, quite frankly, amazed by the amount of sunshine poo one girl can produce. That's right, I'm talking about my bowel movements online. AGAIN. Geesh. Sunshine poo, I mean it, it's bright yellow. It's amazing. I guess that's where all the bile goes without a gallbladder to store it in anymore....? I'm finding that I can eat foods that I haven't been able to eat in years. Tomatoes? Oh yeah! Cheese? Yum. Carrots, peas, pineapple and grapes? So far so good! It's a liberation of sorts. Can't wait to hit the mexicana cucinas in Tucson and have salsa and guacamole for the first time in years! Yee Haw!

Bisbee is also making a strong recovery. Crazy Legs has begun joining us in bed at night again and is stretching out in front of the fire in the evenings instead of hiding under beds or refusing to leave the safety his cage. We hope to let him back out to freedom when we return from our trip. A big thanks to Zoe next door for looking out for him while we're gone.

Things will probably be quiet on the blog for a couple of weeks, though I will try to post a postcard or two. And I'm afraid I've sort of fallen behind with project 52. The week in the hospital and the last week of house-arrest have kept me away from our dear oak tree. Now that I'll be abroad for the next couple of weeks I'm afraid I'll completely miss out the spring time exuberance of the oilseed rape fields in the background. But I'll make an effort to get a photo at least once a month from here on out......

So long. xx Bee

The Road To Recovery

2008-04-12T13:12:00.003+01:00

After spending a week in the hospital, an emergency gallbladder surgery and an 'interesting' national health service experience, I cannot begin to tell you how grateful I am to be laying prone on my sofa in my own sunny living room with a whole day of George Clooney to look forward to on Film4 this afternoon. Wow, what a week! I had a 4 mm stone blocking my bile duct and causing all manner of chaos in my body. They say gallstones are as painful as child birth - I appreciate you mamas out there all the more now. It's absolutely astonishing how something so small, merely 4 mm, not even a 1/4 inch, not even a garden pea, maybe a lentil? can cause so much trouble! I really appreciate the way my body works in harmony with itself most of the time, it really doesn't take much to throw it off track. Geno said this morning that seeing me in hospital has made him vow to himself to get his body back into tip top shape, so at least there's a positive out of all this suffering.

My road to recovery is paved with Arizona red rock. We've been planning a trip to see my family in Tucson next week and it's been most worrysome that this little stone might have put our holiday in jeopardy. But, I think if I can manage the flight - thankfully it's direct! - I'll recover poolside in the Arizona sunshine and leave the miserable English April showers behind! See ya later, alligators!

'My Baby's Gonna Make A Mint' Chocolate Chip Cupcakes

2008-04-07T12:50:00.005+01:00

He did it! He passed his final exam! For the past three years, the G has spent all manner of spare time studying for his accountancy exams. CIMA to be exact, which is international management accounting which is different, er... somehow. I'm no expert, but my baby's got letters after his name now! Woo Hoo!

To celebrate, what else but cupcakes!

'My Baby's Gonna Make A Mint' Chocolate Chip Cupcakes

for the cupcakes
2 cups / 225 g cake/self-raising flour
4 tbsp cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder
2 cups / 225 g sugar
1 cup / 225 g butter
4 eggs
3 1/2 oz (100g) chocolate chips

for the icing
1/2 cup / 115 g butter
2 cups/ 225 g confectioners/icing sugar
1/2 tsp peppermint essence
green food coloring
3 1/2 oz chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 325 F/ 160 C. Place paper baking cases in muffin tins. In a medium bowl sieve the flour, cocoa, and baking powder. Set aside. Beat the sugar and butter together in a large bowl until smooth. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition until the mixture light and glossy. Add the flour mixture gradually, stirring until well combined. Stir in the chocolate chips. Spoon the mixture into the cases and fill about 3/4 of the way. Bake for 20 minutes or until a poker comes out clean. Allow the cupcakes to cool in the tin for about 5 minutes before removing to a rack.

Meanwhile, get started on the icing. Mmmm, icing. Beat the butter and icing sugar in a small bowl until smooth and the sugar is no longer lumpy. Stir in the peppermint and just enough food coloring to turn the icing a mint green. Decorate with chocolate chips or other implements of chocolate destruction.

Store without icing in an airtight container for up to 3 days, or freeze for up to 3 months!

For variations try these....

For Superbad Super Minty cupcakes, try using crumbled chocolate mints in the cake batter, like After Eights or Andes, those hotel pillow mints.

For something really crazy, how about chocolate orange minty cupcakes? Break a chocolate orange and crumble it into the cake batter or on top of the icing.

Did you notice our new kitchen fish? Introducing Moby Snoop Fish!! He's got his mind on his money and his money on his mind.

Sorry he's so blurry, but he's really fast. Really.

Ice Ice Baby

2008-04-06T12:40:00.000+01:00

(He has snow on his head) We woke up at 4 am. I had a tummy ache, but couldn't get back to sleep because there was 6 inches on snow on the ground! Exciting! We went for an early morning walk when everything is still so quiet and the snow has dampened all sound. We wrote secret messages in the snow, we threw snowballs and trees, road signs and each other, we followed animal tracks and imagined ourselves antarctic explorers. We got back to the house by 7:30, G watched match of the day and we promptly fell asleep in front of the tv until noon. Afterall, that's what Sundays are made for.

Project 52 (13 of 52)

2008-04-06T12:36:00.000+01:00

What's all this about April showers then? What's with the snow?

Notes from a kitty prison and a recipe for cheeky monkey banana bread

2008-04-04T11:46:00.000+01:00

Bisbee's always been a little bit rock n roll. He lives fast and he lives large, climbing trees, walking narrow fencelines, hunting mice and birds, opening doors and cupboards around the house and helping himself to the fridge any chance he gets to sneak in under the radar, and racing up and down the stairs like he's the fastest cat in the world. So it was not unexpected that kitty cat lock down would bring with it a little bit of depression.

Week 2 from kitty prison and Bisbee's lost nearly a kilo! That's 10% if his body weight! We expected a little bit of weight loss with the not being as active and losing some muscle tone, but he's really becoming a bag of bones and turning his kitty nose up at everything we offer. So the two of us are trying all manner of temptation to get the little bugger to eat. We sing songs, we get him to purr and purr with brushing and stroking his golden locks, we give him a room with a view and keep the bird feeder topped up so he has lots to see, we play with string and feathers toys, we offer cheese and butter and tuna juice and chicken broth. We heat food in the microwave, we give him the dregs from our cereal bowl (a former favorite), we boil chicken, we bake salmon, we make a pate' of a/d and catlax (because, oddly, he loves cat lax) and that, so far, seems to be the only thing that works, but one can't survive on catlax alone. Do you have any kitty cat temptation ideas? Recipes?

Vets and vet nurses on the other hand are a bit easier to please. And as a token of appreciation and thanksgiving, I whipped up a bit banana bread on behalf of our cheeky monkey, Bisbee. The vets were especially great considering that we weren't registered with them and we came in at 5:30 as they were closing with a cat with a broken leg. They didn't even bat an eye, got us in at the first opportunity and treated us with kindness. It makes all the difference in the world to be treated kindly and openly when you experience a stressful event like a kitty cat emergency.

This recipe is a favorite since we're constantly running up a glut of bananas that need eating. It takes one weekend away (or attack of choleangitis and the accompanying inappetence) and you have more browning bananas than you can shake a stick at. This recipe is so easy, you don't even need a mixer for it, it's a one bowl wonder!

Cheeky Monkey Banana Bread

3 or 4 over-ripe bananas - smashed
1/3 cup melted butter
1 cup sugar (can easily reduce to 3/4 cup)
1 egg, beaten
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp baking soda
1 tbsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp mixed spice
pinch of salt
1 1/2 cup all-purpose/plain flour

Preheat the oven to 350F (175 C), butter a 4 x8 inch loaf pan.

In a large mixing bowl, add the melted butter to the mashed bananas and mix well with a wooden spoon. Mix in the sugar, egg, and vanilla. Sprinkle the baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg and mixed spice over the mixture and stir in. Add the flour last, a spoonful at a time, and mix in. Pour batter into a loaf pan and bake for 45 minutes to an hour or until a wooden toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Cool on a rack and enjoy with a steaming cup of morning coffee.

Want to see other recipes from the Queen Bee? Click here, or here, and here, or here and even here.

K is for Karma

2008-04-02T17:01:00.006+01:00

Something my dad said once has always stuck. I was having a particularly unlucky day and called him up with tales of radiator leaks and of locking myself out of the house in my bathrobe. He said that whenever you feel a bit of bad karma coming on it was time to pull the covers up over your head and lay low for a couple of days until things blow over. Man, I should've listened.

First, Bisbee had a mishap and ended up with a broken pelvis. We're not sure if he was hit by a car or fell from a tree or rooftop or what. He didn't have as much as a scratch on him, other than a small puncture wound on his left hip. The x-rays showed he has a fracture on the right side of his pelvis, so maybe he fell and got hung up on a nail or a branch on the way down. So that means 8 weeks of cage rest for the Bisbee.The very next day, I ended up in hospital with....wait for it..... gall stones. Can you believe it? I thought that was only for the elderly or somebody other than me. It's a bit miserable, truth be told. I'm not sick enough to have an emergency operation, but I'm sick enough to be off work for a week. People say it's as painful as labor pains, I wouldn't know for sure but I can't say that it's pleasant to wake up at 3am with a woodpecker boring out your liver. On the bright side, it means I may finally have an answer to why I've had so many digestive problems over the past year. And I've had some time to work on this new doodle and get my hands dirty in the garden.

Project 52 (12 of 52)

2008-04-01T11:36:00.001+01:00

Can you see that first glimpse of spring in the background? There's just a blaze of yellow starting up in the rapeseed field in the distance. Disgusting name, but pretty flowers. The whole county will be overflowing with golden rolling hills in a week or two and it always makes me want to dress up in a bumblebee costume and sing Blind Melon songs.

P.S. Did you know that's where canola oil comes from? Rapeseed oil was first marketed in the States from Canada - Can-ola, get it?

Reason number 847...

2008-03-25T14:12:00.004Z

.... that I know the G and I were made for each other.

Overheard at dinner last night:

Him: "You know those squiggly pasta shapes that are green, orange and white?"
Me: "Yeah, what about them?"
Him: "They make me happy."
Me: "Yeah, me too." Smile.

(Look at all those wedding announcements we made last year! Phew!)

Project 52 (11 of 52)

2008-03-25T11:03:00.002Z

I never saw a discontented tree. They grip the ground as though they liked it, and though fast rooted they travel about as far as we do. They go wandering forth in all directions with every wind, going and coming like ourselves, traveling with us around the sun two million miles a day, and through space heaven knows how fast and far! ~John Muir

Finally, a finished object and some doodle stitching

2008-03-25T10:55:00.003Z

White Easter?

2008-03-23T10:59:00.000Z

The view from the bedroom window this morning......

Easter wishes, some good old-fashioned Catholic guilt and a recipe for Easter Bunny Carrot Cake Cupcakes

2008-03-23T09:45:00.003Z

My husband recently asked me a question that I haven't yet been able to answer honestly, and truth be told, I can't really get it out of my head either. He asked me why I'm always making things for people, buying gifts for no reason, breaking my neck to get wedding or birthday gifts out on time for friends or family whom can't even seem to remember when my birthday is. The answer is obvious to me on a certain level; it makes me really happy watch someone bite into a cupcake and do that little moaning thing while shrugging their shoulders and saying 'oh my god this is soooo good.' I'm secretly thrilled to watch my husband hunt for his Easter egg presents and see the Cheshire cat style smile on his face when he finds one.

There have been loads of weddings in our circle as of late, and as usual, I'm killing myself to try and make or get something for everyone - the G reminds me how dismal our wedding gift take was and asks why I'm trying so hard. I answer that people are busy, they probably just never got round to it. He then says 'but it never works out in return.' 'But it's not like that,' I insist, 'that's not what this is all about. I just find it really rewarding to pick out a thoughtful gift,' I say and mean it. But there's this irksome feeling at the back of my mind that I'm somehow trying to compensate for a shortcoming or leftover childhood guilt (there's a lot of that lingering around these days for some reason) or attention-seeking or some other sinister facet of my personality. Does this random insecurity strike you too and make you question your motives?
Despite my recognizing insecurity in other aspects of my life, my confidence in the kitchen is blossoming and I'm beginning to freestyle a little bit. And it's your lucky day, dear reader, since you'll benefit from my most recent act of benevolence with the following tasty recipe for some gorgeous little cupcakes. (Have I mentioned my burgeoning fantasy about opening my own little cupcake - coffee shop someday? The Queen Bean Cafe. With Hello, Cupcake! catering in the back. The afterhours music venue would be The Mean Bean. See, I've got it all worked out in my head....) I brought nearly three dozen of these beauties into work last week and they disappeared in a matter of minutes. The woodwork was concealing many more people than I had any idea that that even worked at the college who all came out and asked for the recipe. Here you go, folks. Happy Easter. Indulge.

The Queen Bee's Easter Bunny Carrot Cake Cupcakes:

makes 3 dozen cupcakes or one 9" layer cake

3 cups plain/all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 Tbsp baking soda
1 generous Tbsp ground cinnamon
1 1/2 cups olive oil
4 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 Tbsp vanilla extract
1 cup of drained crushed pineapple
1 1/2 cups shelled pecans, chopped
1 1/2 cups shredded coconut
2 cups of shredded carrots
1 cup raisins

Frosting:
400g full fat cream cheese, at room temperature
6 Tbsp unsalted butter, room temp
2 1/2 cups of icing/confectioners sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Juice of 1/2 lemon

1. Preheat oven to 350 F/ 175 C /gas mark 4. Line cupcake/muffin tin with paper cases or grease two 9 inch cake pans.

2. Mix dry ingredients into a large bowl (incl. sugar). Add oil, eggs, vanilla and pineapple and beat well. Fold in pecans, coconut, carrots, and raisins.

3. Pour batter into pans or cupcake tins – fill about ¾ way full as the mix will rise. For cupcakes bake for 20 minutes or until a toothpick or fork inserted in the centre comes out clean. For cakes, bake 50 minutes.

4. To prepare frosting, cream together the cream cheese and butter in a mixing bowl, (if a bit stiff it helps to add the vanilla at this stage). ((Also, a note about reduced fat cream cheese: it’s just too runny for this frosting, you could try using half full fat and half reduced fat and see if that works)) Slowly sift the icing sugar in and beat until mixture is free of lumps. Stir in vanilla and lemon juice.

5. Allow cake to cool and add frosting. Garnish with chopped walnuts or pecans, or paper bunnies attached to toothpicks, if you want.

6. Devour with relish and delight. Calories don’t count on Easter.

Project 52 (9 and 10 of 52)

2008-03-21T09:35:00.001Z

1st March, 2008

9th March, 2008

Time, which changes people, does not alter the image we have retained of them. ~Marcel Proust

Are you as surprised as I am at how little change there has been in my tree over the past three months? Click on the tag below to see all the other offerings from project 52.

Project 52 (8 of 52)

2008-03-20T09:18:00.001Z

'God is the experience of looking at a tree and saying Ah!'

Joseph Campbell

photo 24th Feb, 2008.

Rainy Day Weekends Are For....

2008-03-16T15:39:00.005Z

Fantasizing about going back to the Lake District someday soon.

Curling up on the sofa with a lap cat, a steaming cup of green tea, and a whole season of Gilmore Girls DVD's.

Finally finishing the Pippa bag! (and also finding it a just a little bit ironic that one of my newest friends is called Pippa and secretly planning a whole series of items named after all the women I'd like to be friends with)

Making Easter bunny carrot cake cupcakes (get it, carrot cake, easter bunnies...) for my co-workers. Mostly because I love cream cheese frosting and the cute little cakes make the perfect frosting delivery devices.

Working on my very first embroidery project with inspiration and direction from this neato burrito book. If you haven't seen this already, I urge you to pick it up.

Discovering this website. And then getting completely lost in this one.

Secretly loving it when my neighbor calls me 'virtuous' for answering the door in workout clothes and I'm sure it's only a transliteration and means something completely different than intended in my American ears and then swelling just a little bit with pride. (Another trans-literation --- I've lost a stone since January! That's 12 pounds to you and me!)

Speaking of swelling, have you seen the size of my belly today? Ow.

Watching the raindrops collect on the windowpane and longing for that Arizona sunshine that is only a month away now.... that's right, I'm coming home!

Speaking of Easter, I'm resurrecting Sufjan's Illinois, Gillian's Soul Journey and My Morning Jacket's The Tennessee Fire.

Snuggling into the sofa with the man I love.

Long distance phone calls.

Saying 'hey baby wanna lick my spoon?'

A is for Ambivalence

2008-03-10T10:59:00.006Z

I'm never going to be famous. My name will never be writ large on the roster of Those Who Do Things. I don't do anything. Not one single thing. I used to bite my nails, but I don't even do that anymore. Dorothy Parker, Here Lies (1939), "The Little Hours"

I'm feeling a little bit disappointed in myself for my complete lack of follow through. I have about a million and one unfinished projects and nary a plan nor inclination to finish any of them. I'm in a bit of a lull, truth be told. Spring is flirting with me, giving me hope that tomorrow will find me more accomplished.

((A note about project 52.... I've been having some trouble uploading new photos from my camera to either of our pc's. I think it's a problem with my USB cable and my camera's a bit old school with one of those massive memory cards that doesn't fit into modern laptop card readers. Sigh... I've been taking the photos as promised and according to schedule, just bear with me to figure out a new way to upload them!!))

xx Bee

.... And They're Off!

2008-03-02T20:23:00.004Z

Even though I don't think I could be any farther away from Alaska, the start of the Iditarod always gets me pumped (and just a little bit homesick, truth be told). Follow all the action from the Anchorage Daily News. --I actually subscribe to the coverage and get daily updates by e-mail, what a dork! If the Iditarod's not your thing, the ADN has amazing photo archives from Alaska, it's definitely worth a browse if you've got the time to kill.

photo: Marc Lester - ADN

InspirationThis Sunday

2008-03-02T09:46:00.005Z

Snow drops, daffodils, crocuses, even the first of the season's lambs are wobbling along on knobby knees. Spring? Are you almost here? The weather report disagrees and calls for snow tonight!! March winds, April showers, May flowers, and all that.

Sunday morning finds me reading this gorgeous book on the edible rainbow garden, planning my garden and ordering seeds from Renee on this wonderful website. Finding these funky chickens from bird in the hand tucked away in my website bookmarks and I'm matching fabric from the stash as we speak. I finally pieced Pippa together while convalescing yesterday after having tucked her away for the past 3 months, hopefully she'll be finished this week and I'll be able to show her off. Reading through the archives of this blogger (and this one, oh and this one too!) and falling just a little bit in love.

B de céu azul

2008-03-01T13:33:00.003Z

B de céu azul
Originally uploaded by lopes.janara

Saw this today..... I hope she'll agree to be my new mascot!

F is for Flare-up

2008-03-01T09:27:00.007Z

I want to formally apologize to a certain dear friend of mine who has suffered from IBS long before I ever even dreamed it could happen to me too. I can recall a certain incident involving an emergency shit in someone's unsuspecting hedge in Wallingford on our way down to see the fireworks at Gasworks Park for the 4th of July and my obvious and insensitive annoyance of having to take you back home. There were other occasions too when you complained that you didn't feel well enough to make our dinner date or to come over to some party or another that I was throwing and I sighed in exasperation.

Vengeance is upon me now, and how! All of my eye-rolling and mutterings of 'it can't really be that bad....' started to wane when I began having emergency shits myself, mostly on holiday when dietary indiscretions are inevitable. (Forgive me please for my demarcation of that construction site in Krakow as I was stumbling back to my flat from a late night out with friends, near that pretty little alpine lake in Spain where we just enjoyed a picnic of chorizo and goat's cheese, and that poor little struedel house in Berlin, I enjoyed my wienerschnitzel very much until it turned on me.)

As I'm writing this, I'm writhing in pain from yet another flare up of this weird disorder. I, like many of you I'm sure, thought that IBS was something that was a psychological problem created by stressed out people who if they would just calm down they would feel healthy again like the rest of us. It really wasn't such a big deal, what's the fuss all about? After more than a year of suffering alternating bouts of diarrhea that strikes with cruel precision and often without warning when you're standing in line at the bank, in the car and on a long road trip or going for a run outside Coombe Abbey Country Park and there's not a toilet for 3 miles. And then there's the following weeks of constipation and the painful bloating and discomfort that comes with that and the time spent looking like Hiro from Heroes, stopping time. And then came the medical investigations - some of them invasive, but all of them time consuming, anxiety creating, and ultimately unnecessary.

Why am I going on about this? For one thing, I feel like an ass for being so insensitive (though I don't think ever directly) and not taking the time to understand what a dear friend was going through. It's embarrassing, to say the least, to sheepishly explain that you have to leave the movie cinema immediately or you might explode. I get that now. I also hope to be some kind of advocate for raising awareness about IBS, it's likely that you know someone who has it - they say 1 in 5 Americans will have it at some point in their lifetimes. Some 4 million Brits are affected.

From Heather Van Vorous, IBS expert "IBS is indisputably a physical problem. Simply put, the brain-gut interaction of people with IBS influences their bowel pain perception and motility. In a nutshell, the processing of pain information within the central nervous system varies between normal individuals and those of us with IBS, with the result that we can experience even normal GI contractions as painful. The interactions between our brains, central nervous systems and GI systems are just not functioning properly. We have colons that react to stimuli that do not affect normal colons, and our reactions are much more severe."

This morning, I measured my amazing bloated girth. Even my husband is suspicious that I'm 5 months pregnant, and he knows better. My waist is normally large at 35 inches, but it has today expanded to an incredible 43 inches. I can't bend at the waist. I don't have any clothes that I can wear comfortably, and with the painful contractions from being so blocked up that drop me to my knees on occasion, I'm really not able to leave the house today.

G is for Goat Goodness

2008-02-24T22:48:00.006Z

Go on... make your best goat sound. You know you want to. Nobody's looking. Go on.

Alphabet Soup. I'm embarking on a new photo project that will follow from the alphabet, in no particular order, even though I work in a library and that's hard for me. This photo was taken on a hike in the mountains of northern Spain last August. Los Picos de Europa to be exact. Here's hoping the new project will give me impetus to take my camera with me more often. Keep checking back for more!

Participating

2008-02-24T12:17:00.007Z

I took part in my first ever blog swap recently! It was the photo swap themed 'Simplicity' and organized by the uber-organized Megan at Scent of Water. It seems she's moving house and arranging fun stuff for us bloggers, hats off to you, Megan. You're amazing! I received this lovely photo from Amy at Happy Things and I just can't believe my luck. What an enchanting photo, Amy, you truly captured the spirit of simplicity on this autumn porch. Thank you!

Take a minute to browse all the photos from the simplicity swap by following this link. There are some truly magical photos from some truly talented women. Enjoy!