One of us

Has been in the wars. We are not exactly sure what sort of war, if it was a catty virus or a bad bird eaten but he was very poorly indeed. For the first time in living memory Magnus went off his food. Emergency enough coming from a cat so greedy he has been known to eat slices of bread left out for the birds, but coupled with a general malaise, floppiness and look of utter misery, we were worried enough to take him to visit David the vet.

Lots of tests were done, blood was drawn on both sides and Magnus was left overnight with a drip to restore his fluids, if not his temper. The boy is now officially the most aggressive cat the surgery has ever known but thankfully the results of the tests indicate that nothing awful is amiss.

We took him home the next day, stinking and grumpy ( he wouldn't let them clean him up ) so our home currently smells of wee and disinfectant. He is feeling much better, eating like a cat possessed and within minutes of arriving home was on the kitchen worktop licking the breadboard. He was shaved in three places for the drip and for some x-rays so he looks for all the world like a bridegroom after a particularly raucous Stag Night.

In the meantime I'm knitting socks, making jam, and hoping that the smell will go soon.

Comforting Soup.

Ingredients.

First find two leeks, two onions and a handful of small potatoes sulking in the blue plastic tub in the cupboard under the sink. Seek out a couple of cloves of garlic. Some honey in a jar. Spices.

Remember there is no milk in the house.

Method.

Wash and slice the leeks, peel and slice the onions and garlic.
Add to a pan with some olive oil and butter if you have any.
Peel potatoes in readiness.

Let the leek, onion and garlic fry away gently till very soft and a bit mushy. Take this slowly, it brings out the sweetness in the veg and allows you the time to realise that you are wearing inside out long johns and no socks. For no apparent reason.

When the onions, leeks and garlic are soft, add a teaspoonful of the Scottish Heather Honey that was recieved as a gift then left on a shelf and forgotten about. Which is daft as you really like honey. The honey will help the mixture to caramelise and to further aid the process, turn the heat up and leave the pan alone. Don't stir, take the opportunity to stop cooking and look out of the window. Count the goldfinches on their special birdfeeder and enjoy the sight of someone else clearing the path outside. Return to look at the pan when it begins to smell toasty but before it smells burnt.

Chop the potatoes, add to the pan and stir, making sure that you dissolve the toasty brown stickiness on the base of the pan, this is where a lot of the flavours are hiding. Add stock ( bouillion powder and boiling water in this case) and cook gently for about 45 minutes till the potatoes are beginning to melt into the soup. Don't add too much stock as you are just about to ask the path-clearer if he will go to the shop and buy the milk which is needed to finish off the soup. *

On his return, place a cup of milk in another saucepan, add a couple of bay leaves, a clove, some peppercorns and some fennel seeds. If your spice collections boasts a little packet of juniper berries, now is the time to bash one or two with a spoon and add it to the milk. Bring to the boil and then straight away turn off the heat and leave to cool down.

When the soup is ready, strain the spiced milk into the pan and gently reheat. Do don't boil. Boiling can cause upleasant curdling.

Divide into bowls to share with the path-clearer/milk buyer and saviour of the bird table. In the best of all possible worlds, eat with some oatcakes and sharp cheese and a glass of whisky.

* More organised households would have enough supplies in order to allow the spices and milk to be prepared in advance to allow for the fullest flavour to develop.

December 25th 2009

Vote Magnusmog!!

Someone, my mum actually, has nominated me for a blog award with a breakfast cereal company.
Scroll down the page to the Blog competition and add your vote if you fancy.
I'm in there somewhere under the Lifestyle blogs. If I win I'll let you share my mueseli!

Dizzy, Grumpy and Puggled.

Is a description of the state of me, rather than the names of Santa's new reindeer. Too much excitement has taken its toll and my energy reserves have run out. I've been confined to barracks for most of the week, bumbling around the house like a bee with a defective flight plan.

When not lying on the sofa playing a furry game of Russian Roulette with Magnus ( he sleeps on my chest, I try not twitch in my sleep and cause him to strike with all claws ) I have been knitting simple things to keep me sane. Two scarves of the Baktus persuasion have been finished off and the sainted Mary Jane came to my rescue with her Cabled Chullo pattern which is super easy but looks really impressive. It is finished and blocking on a balloon in my window, much to the confusion of the neighbours who mistook it for me when they walked past. I say the hat is finished but in reality I have still to rustle up the energy to make two pom poms. Any day now.

I have been entertaining myself by taking pictures of the cat 'helping' with my craft endeavours. Here are some of my favourites. The project on the ironing board is in fact my very first ever patchwork quilt made from rectangles of denim. It has been sent upstairs to Knitting Headquarters for Christmas and I confidently anticipate that it will be finished in January just as soon as I have taught myself how to make a border.

Winter sunlight on my toes.

Time for a fibre update. The cold weather has made the knitting of bedsocks imperative and I used my beautiful Fyberspates green to make these chaps. I had thought of teaming the green up with some hand dyed purple yarn but the more I knitted the less the sock looked like a chic take on the urban goth look and more like the work of a knitter who was colourblind. Or completely lacking in taste. Thankfully I had an emergency supply of sensible white yarn which did the trick.

Our little weeping willow tree gets pruned every six months or so otherwise the branches get so thick that they deny light to the surrounding plant life. Last pruning I rescued the trimmings and soaked them in a bucket of water till they grew mouldy and fragrant. The resulting dye is a subtle warm peach, spun into a thick-ish single ply. Imagine my smugness, fibre spun on a Friday, yarn washed and dried over the weekend and a shawl knitted by Thursday night. Only the yarn was too thick for the pattern and there really wasn't enough of it. The teeny shawl that was the result of all that effort made me look like Jemima Puddleduck
This afternoon I will be listening to the football on Radio Scotland and turning a too small shawl into a just right scarf using only some 5mm needles and a strong sense of hubris.

New Views of London

View number one: Distinguished artist Grayson Perry, view obscured by fawning fan who had made him some hand-spun wrist warmers and was in the process of handing them over. Mr Perry kindly noted that he looked forward to having warm wrists.

View number two: Empty plate, Carluccio's restuarant, Richmond. Very fine food and good company.


View number three: The view from our first hotel, the Euston Travelodge. It is fair to say that the Travelodge chain is not renowned for its love of the picturesque.


View number four: Knitter near Euston Square finds that pointy sticks are no match for urban flying monsters. Subject is relieved to look slightly less like the back of a ( London ) bus than in view number one.

Thank you to Archie for taking views one and four.