Weeknote, 11/9

This week I have been mostly:

Knitting:
the sparkly hat.



It really is very sparkly. I have reached the slouchy crown and am starting to regret adding the cables a little. They look really good and I am very pleased with it, but man, they are fiddly.



I need to man up and get it finished, really. I saw some pictures last week of someone's trip to Iceland this summer and it finally dawned on me that going there in February it's going to be really very cold and therefore I can legitimately knit more thrummed mittens and snuggly hats and scarves. This is A Good Thing.

Going to:
Work. Yes, back to work. It has been quite a good week, but next week is the tough one of the timetable cycle so we'll see.

My personal trainer. She is very good! After an initial consultation last week we had an hour session on Thursday after work. This involved kettle bells and medicine balls and boxing, as well as a lot of sweating and undignified panting in her quiet little garden gym. At the end, she stretched me which was novel and even better than stretching myself. Two days later, the ache has basically worn off but there are certainly bits of me that hurt that have never hurt before, so it must have been good. She's really going to help me get ski ready - assuming I manage to avoid throwing the kettle bell through the mirrors in one of the upward flings and being fired as a client.

Eating:
Not raw runner beans, after I made this mistake last week. The day before my brand new TG started school, we had homegrown runner beans in a risotto, except that Mr Z prepared them in an unusual way by popping them all out of their pods, and I forgot to put them in until the end, so they were not really cooked. Then at 3am I had to get up to be sick. Turns out, they contain a poisonous protein called lectin and if you heat the beans to 80 degrees this increases the amount of lectin by five times, unless you continue heating until they're cooked.
So, first day with new TG was not as joyful as it might have been, and I have learned something new.

I have also been eating damson jam. Mary at knitting group brought masses of damsons to Get Knitted on Saturday and Rosee and I fought over them but both ended up with enough for a good batch of jam. Indeed, I had so much I ran out of jars. Here's the recipe I used.



This is what's left after giving a jar to Aliboo (who may be in for another jar, since there is only so much jam I can eat) and eating what was leftover after all the jars had been filled.
I don't know what testing for pectin involves but it has set rather too hard so I would say, there was enough pectin in it. Maybe next time I will boil less.

It was good to get the old preserving pan out again; it usually only sees the light of day for mango chutney. Today I'm going to make spiced apple chutney using this recipe from Sally, using the apples from Aliboo's dear departed apple tree, which fell over last week. I have also been reminded of a rather delicious runner bean chutney I used to make, which might have to be whipped up in the next week or two.

I've also been eating blackberries from the school field. There are so many of them!

Obsessed with:
Making Google Maps. I have been working on one for work as part of my Google thing, and then I started working on one for myself last night, of places I had lived, and now I am thinking about what others I can do.

Entertained by:
The end of Big Brother. I know not many people watched it towards the end but I always found it quite entertaining and it has been fun the past few weeks, to watch old housemates come and go.
@NewEarthquake - tweets every time there is an earthquake in the world over 4.5, and has a dynamic avatar which shows whereabouts in the world it happened. This is a very cool thing! I have been enjoying it. I had no idea there were so many earthquakes happening all the time.

Fed up with:
Nothing, really. I might take this out of the weeknote headings. I think I must have been feeling whiney when I put it in.

Feeling:
By turns, tired and excited. I'm not managing to get to bed at a reasonable hour and when I do, my mind is churning with school ideas and mental to do lists. It's good to feel the bustle of the new term and to be lifted by it.