Trivial and mundane things

I have been very pleasantly surprised this evening by a film which I thought would be pants. In fact, I remember when it came out, I saw a trailer and, in spite of the fact it falls into my guilty secret genre (teen school flicks) I thought, "Good grief, what an utter pile of shite that is going to be." The film in question, the Girl Next Door, actually turned out to be hugely entertaining, in spite of the fact they moreorless stole the entire plot from Risky Business (which I also like a lot) - right down to the very expensive mantelpiece adornment. There was no dancing-in-pants-and-socks scene, but there is a bit where the main character is forced to run naked down a suburban street.

Having perused the reviews on imdb I see I'm not alone. This makes me feel better for liking it. It really was very funny. And really that Timothy Olyphant should do more acting in things I am likely to see because he is very funny.

I went to the farmers' market up the road from me today. I wasn't especially hopeful - I think there is only one thing that is farmed in the local area and that's the sort of illegal thing you need a heat lamp and a lot of tin foil for - but there was a good selection of stuff. They even had pickled eggs in malt vinegar which you almost never see. I know, BLEUCH. I can't see the sense in taking a delicious fresh egg, boiling the crap out of it and then immersing it in vinegar for a few months. I think they are like kebabs, and you only see them in bars because you would only ever eat one after a lot of alcohol. Mr Z has educated me otherwise, though. He will only eat the kind in malt vinegar....hence my excitement at the find today.

I also got some very pink rhubarb, some very tender asparagus, some very tasty sausages, and some goats cheese....from a very creepy woman. She was creepy. She may have spent too much time in her dairy. She seemed like she belonged in an episode of the League of Gentlemen. I had to keep reminding myself that they were Gloucestershire farmers and I'm used to Wiltshire ones. Perhaps the farms in Gloucestershire are more isolated.

Anyway, the reason for the detailed description of today's shopping is because I have decided to take part in One Local Summer. I heard about it through a group on Ravelry. Basically, I have to cook one meal a week from all locally-grown ingredients, excluding oil, salt, pepper and spices. I decided this would be a snap, what with all those farm shops I drive past on the way home from work and the endless supply of eggs from the teaching assistant at work. I sort of forgot that the summer extends past July 25th, and therefore, for 5 weeks of the challenge, I won't be driving past anything if I can help it. And may well not have a kitchen for a large portion of those 5 weeks.

Oh, I'm overjoyed at the prospect of ripping out the kitchen and replacing it. Really. I can't wait. I wish we could start tomorrow. I wish we could win the lottery and go and lie on a beach in the Maldives for 3 weeks while a small army of builders, carpenters, plumbers and kitchen fitters did the whole thing for us.

So, back to OLS. I may have to get quite creative with my meals for the 5 weeks I won't be at work. Breakfast counts as a meal, right?

I have finished my massive swatch for Marianne in glorious acrylic. I am at a bit of a loss with what to do with it now, tbh. I might use it as a face cloth, though it seems a bit indulgent to use a lace face cloth, even if it is made from something that costs £1 for 200g.



Everything inside the black lines is what I made up. I'm really glad I knitted the whole pattern out because I realised I had made several mistakes which would have been impossible to fix if I'd been using the Baby Kid, and I would have been really pissed off with myself because at least two of them were really stupid mistakes. At one point I'd lined up two YOs next to each other - hence the two rather large holes visible to the trained eye.

In places it looks a bit strange but then, the increase sections will only account for
a small portion of the actual garment and I don't think it will be noticable...and one of the reason for the strangeness towards the bottom is because I made a huge mess of knitting the pattern for a couple of rows and that's just idiocy,not the pattern. Now I just have to work the numbers and figure out how many stitches I need to cast on. This is easily the most prep I've ever done for a pattern, it had better be worth it.

I got a new phone this week. I am very pleased with it - it's very shiny and I have the most garish blue and purple background pattern. I rang up T-Mobile all ready to play it tough because I didn't want to pay £80 for the upgrade (first upgrade in 2 and a half years, there's no way I'm forking out for it!) However, the woman on the phone was extremely helpful; she switched my tariff to something which should be costing me half what I'm paying (in reality, it seems to be about the same...but I am at least getting more for it...I'll see what the bill says when it comes in) and she gave me the phone for free, and then she gave me a month's free trial of the web'n'walk.

Oh, clever T-Mobile dealer. It's only been 3 days and I'm already hooked. It was enough to push me into finally using that Google calendar I kept meaning to fill in (I am absolutely useless with diaries). I can upload pictures direct to here (hence the posts below - Mr Z worked out how to do this before I did). Facebook and I need never be parted again. It's very exciting. That free month is going to pass before I even notice it, isn't it?

One final thing. I was playing YouTube tag tonight and found this and it made me laugh a lot. Mr Z and I developed an appreciation for country music last summer. It's good honest lyrics like "I wanna see the other half of your butterfly tattoo" and "I don't give a darn bout what other people think, waddya think about that?" which sold us. It helped that one of the biggest songs on country radio last summer featured Mr Z's name in the title. Every new song was like a gift waiting to be listened to with incredulity. It amazes me that some of them even get written, so mundane and trivial is their subject matter. But they are mostly fun.