Someday My Quince Will Come

In the news today  - sixty-odd thousand geese have flown many miles this month to spend the winter in Angus.  Lucky for us we also had a flying visit from the marvelous Mary Jane Mucklestone.  We met up in the not quite so marvelous Travelodge at Aberdeen Airport as MJ swept in en route from from her star appearance at Shetland Wool Week before heading home to the States.

In her luggage was a copy of her brand new, not yet released book ( you can see just how excited I was to get my hands on it ) and many many beautiful swatches and samples of Fair Isle. Complete and utter knitterly Heaven. We managed to squeeze in a meal and a whole lot of talking and it was great to catch up with her. Next time I hope we'll be in more salubrious surroundings with a lot more time to talk and knit. Archie came with me and took these pictures. He had fun and said that we didn't talk about knitting too much.

So many samples and swatches

I used to have a face like this on Christmas morning!

 Also this week - our one and only quince was picked. We've had the quince tree for years, bought as a sad looking sapling after I read about making quince cheese in a cookery book. While every year it has given us the most beautiful flowers only now has a fruit appeared. It smells amazing but is rock hard. I'll cook it gently with some apples then eat very very slowly.

Oh, and I finished a pair of socks with some hand dyed yarn from Ripplescrafts. I know there is only one of them here but I really like the light in this shot.  I believe it might be that elusive thing called sunlight. Not a lot of that around these days but I have the memories of Mary Jane's colourful samples to cheer me through the winter.

I know, bad pun.

Stitch pattern comes from Hedgerow Socks on Ravelry.

Plummy Evolution and Parental Revenge.

When I was a teenager I spent many miserable Sunday afternoons traipsing around furniture stores. As my folks admired the shiny new matching suites and nests of tables I lurked in the background perfecting my slouch and wishing I was anywhere else.  There I was a sensitive Bohemian stuck in suburbia when I was meant for higher things.  I'd loudly complain about the ugliness of pretty much everything on sale and secretly plan my escape to a place far far away from the middle class awfulness that was stifling me. A place where I would be appreciated as the genius I so obviously was.  It was torture. What my genius didn't realise, was  that as far as my parents were concerned, the torture was mutual.

A few weeks ago I was back in my teenage purgatory only this time I was one of the grown ups. We needed a new sofa and after extensive research in the same horrid shops we chose a successor to the scruffy collapsing thing we've been sitting on all these years.  I happened to mention this in an email to my father and this was his reply.


Jeni
I think someone must have hacked into your emails. This mention of G Plan just can't be coming from you - the very essence of middle class aspiration, and someone expects me to believe that you have succumbed.


It might have taken him twenty seven years but my dad has had the last word!

In other news. The nights are getting darker, the shelves are looking bare. Time to make plum jam. I wonder what my teenage self would think of that.