Weekend WIP

I am 23 rows into the yoke of the Wonderwoman jumper. Ooo. Wonderwoman.

Yes, you can probably expect that every time.

At one point I had a tangle of four mini skeins of the white, which had become irritating; but I've hit upon the trick of securing each one with a kirby grip to stop them from unravelling when not in use, which has seemed to work quite well. Hopefully that will help when I am juggling 10 of the buggers.

This yarn is knitting up very soft, I am impressed. The stars look good and will look even better when blocked out, I think. I have to wash the blue swatch but there's been no dye transfer to my hands or the white yarn yet.

I am a bit concerned it's going to be too small. I have got gauge, but the yoke is 58 rows so this is apparently more than one third of it. Meh. I should worry less.

Sunday Selfie

Just getting into my traditional Christmas Eve bath with a cocktail and this mask I picked up in Holland and Barrett.

That's a negroni I made using Bombay London gin, Campari and the sloe sherry we made two years ago. The sloe sherry has now turned into something amazingly, dangerously drinkable. I'm heartbroken that it would take four years to replicate it - a year of soaking sloes in gin, a year of soaking them in sherry, then two years of sherry maturing. Who's got time for that?

On the plus side, I'm less than a year off drinking that lemon gin I was wishing for when we decanted the sherry off the ginny sloes.

Weeknote: 23/12

Knitting:
I've done a bit of lace shawl, but most knitting time this week has been taken up with charting the new Wonderwoman jumper, as blogged about earlier this week, and then actually casting it on. Yes, it is officially on the needles. Expect pictures and a progress report tomorrow.

Going to:
I began the week in a prefab somewhere in Cardiff, on a stupid driver awareness course (as in, yes, I am aware I am a stupid driver). I got caught speeding through a variable speed camera on the M5 back in September. I am still sore about it - I was doing 29 in a 20 limit that had been set during an accident 10 hours earlier. There was one other car in sight, and I think he got caught too. The next gantry, at which we were expected to exit the closed motorway, was lit up at 40mph. I am still fairly certain that they had just gone home without switching the sign off. But whatever. The course was actually quite interesting, though it is the irritation at having to do it that will ensure I am more careful through the gantries next time, not the course itself. I am not much of a speedster. I drive a Picanto.
After that, I took myself off to Cribbs and had a sushi lunch and shopped in John Lewis and assorted other establishments. Christmas presents were purchased.
On Tuesday, Jo and I had our annual trip to Gloucester services for dinner and cheese shopping, this time with Kath. Cheese was purchased, along with gin, sausages and a variety of other things I didn't strictly need.
Wednesday was errands day: dentist. Accountant. Doing most of my tax return after finding out how much the accountant charges (I think I will treat myself next year, though. esp since it's a deductible). Doing an exam board job. Then into the 'shire for drinks with my old colleagues. I spent most of the night chatting to my old boss Ian, although other old friends also featured, including Yakob. Nice to catch up.
The extent of Thursday's expeditioning was posting Christmas cards, and Friday was not much better, featuring only a trip to the butcher for the Christmas meats and to the beautician for the Christmas nails.
Which brings us to today, when I have but ventured out to the 'wood for the Christmas dinner veggies.

It's nice being on holiday and having a variety of things to write about.

Learning:
That some of those decorations I stuck to my wreath are made of glass and they make a very pretty sound when they kamikaze off the wreath and smash on the doorstep.
That some of those traffic cameras will pick up people using their mobile phones.

Obsessed with:
Writing. I'm writing this book. It's not going well. I just can't make myself sit down and do it. I asked for a long deadline and they gave it to me, but now that deadline is less than 3 months away and I'm at about 7% completion. That's not great.
I think I did have a breakthrough today, though. I'm ok as long as I am writing about teaching activities. Apparently I can manage that quite well. It's the intellectual stuff I am struggling with. I might need to leave a lot of that out.

Entertained by:
I've been catching up on the Victoria series from earlier this year, and it has made me want to watch the Crown. I need more spare time.
I've also watched Die Hard and most the The Holiday because, well, it is Christmas, isn't it.

Feeling:
Strangely well prepared for Christmas. I don't think I have broken up as early as the 15th ever in my teaching career to date. Having a whole week to get ready for the day is blissful, but I don't quite know what to do with myself. I've probably spent too long sitting in my chair, since I have a sore neck.

Fave Friday

I'm nearly at the end of the fabulous advent calendar now. I have very much enjoyed the treats and it has been fun to try out new products.

I think my favourite so far has been the Instant Smooth Perfecting Touch.

There's a lot of white space at the top of that picture that I am too lazy to edit out. 

I'm not that into primers; I don't wear masses of face make up, except for some blusher sometimes. However, I thought I'd whack this on before the work Christmas party and see what happened. It was like somebody had done a soft focus on my face in real life. Pores that I'd never really considered were suddenly gone. My skin looked like a fresh peach. My make up glided on. It was a revelation. 

I have used it once more since, just on its own, no base make up. My blusher lasted longer and I looked like it wasn't the end of the Christmas term. I don't know what more I could ask for. 

This is quite pricy for what sounds like a very small jar (15ml?), but I may have to purchase some. 

Ooo...Wonderwoman

I am a big fan of Wonderwoman. I haven't seen the recent film, tbf, but I am a keen admirer of her outfit, peripherals and power.

(I'm guessing this image is copyright DC comics).

It's just iconic, isn't it? And easy to copy in a variety of ways. Last year I went to Hallowe'en bikram in a Wonderwoman outfit. I ironed some transfer stars onto some blue boxer shorts and wore them with a red bra top and a couple of wrist things I'd fashioned out of a cut up yellow towel. Unfortunately the popper I'd fabric-glued to the towel headband came loose, and the red star fabric painted on had not dried, so I wasn't in the full glory of it, but one day I will get another chance.

A few years ago, I knitted a WW headband for my ski buddy Cara for our fancy dress skiing. I am thinking of having a fancy dress ski day on the trip at Easter, too. I think I could DIY another one for myself by then.

Anyway. I have had a pattern in my queue almost since I started knitting, and browsing the finished items on Ravelry, I came across this amazing Wonderwoman jumper, and I decided I had to give it a go. That must be nearly two years ago now, since I bought the yarn for it at the John Arbon open day in 2016, so this week I have bitten the bullet, bought the pattern and got ready to get started.

This has mostly involved a lot of charting. I was a bit daunted by the stars and where to place them, so decided the only thing to do was to chart out the whole upper section and work out star placement before I got started. Right up to the final increases. Sigh.

To begin with, I charted out the blue, then added the stars and thought I was probably ready to start. But then I realised that I hadn't considered where the raglan lines would fall. I stewed on this for a day but then pulled up my socks and chart those as well....and ended up with something like this:

I say something like, because I had already begun fixing it by this point. I can't knit raglan increases on top of stars, my head will figuratively explode. I also started to worry that my stars might be a bit small, so I trawled Ravelry quickly for a pattern and have ended up with this:

(Just an aside - neither of these pictures captures the whole chart. It is bi, i, ig. Now quite sure it is usable, but it does put me in mind of when I charted the lace increases for that lace cardigan I never finished nearly 10 years ago. I hope that's not prophetic.)

Much more pleasing. Now I can start winding my yarn. There will be a point where I am juggling 10 white bobbins and crying into my gin, but I will cross that bridge when I come to it (and maybe strand).

Christmas wreath DIY

I used to cobble together my own Christmas wreath, but a couple of years ago I bought a lovely star-shaped one from Bath Christmas markets, covered in dried citrus and the like. To my horror, when we fished it out of the loft this December it was growing things....and not more citrus.

I probably should have trashed the whole thing but I was unwilling to get rid of the star base and had a bunch of leftover decorations that never make it onto the tree, so I had a go at upcycling it. I don't know whether you could really call the finished product better than the original, but it is certainly better than the carnival of mould that came out of the loft last week.

First, I yanked off as much of the old mouldy decoration as possible. It was fun but whoever glued them down did a really good job. I left the pine cones, because they don't tend to go mouldy.

It got messy but it was fun. Also, I was not totally sure what those mini pumpkinesque things were, but after this I rubbed my eye and I can confirm they are some kind of chilli.

After that, I arranged my decorations across the destroyed body of the wreath and stuck them down with UHU. In some cases there wasn't a lot to stick, but luckily all these decorations are very light and didn't require hefty sticking.

Once they had dried on, I added this bauble with a bow at the top, et voila.

I think it could do with a couple more baubles tbh, since you can still see places where I ripped away the old fruits, but I started to think if I left it any longer, Christmas would be over.

I do wish I had the patience/motivation to knit myself a nice wreath for next year. I remember starting to knit holly leaves for one once. I think I managed one, of an estimated 80 required. Sigh.

Christmas Treats: Salted Caramel Sauce

I've made three batches of this over the past week. I burnt the first batch; the second batch was all given away; the third batch was cooked up for adding to things over Christmas, because, yknow, there's never enough sugar around at Christmas, is there?

400g white sugar
180g butter, cut into cubes
250ml double cream
Sea salt, to taste

Put the sugar in a big pan and set it over a low heat. We got a new oven last week and I set this over the lowest setting as I'm still learning it. Lowest setting meant I could go away and wash up/do other things while I was waiting for the sugar to melt, but it did take a while. I'm sure you've seen enough Bake Off to know not to stir, but swirling and prodding is to be encouraged.

Once the sugar has melted, add the cubed butter and stir rapidly, while it bubbles and spits, until the butter is all combined - takes a couple of minutes. Then add the double cream in a very thin stream, stirring constantly to create a rambunctious inferno of boiling sinfulness. Allow to boil for a minute or two, then remove from the heat and add the salt, to taste.

Pour into a jar. Admire.

I plan to have this over ice cream, and use it to make sticky buns from a recipe I saw in the Guardian at the weekend. And since it has set quite solid, I might try my hand at making some into chocolates. It probably won't end well, but I guarantee I will enjoy it.