I deserve a pat

For being a very good girl and remembering to not only buy my mum a card but some flowers as well for mothering sunday. Not that she will get them on sunday as the delivery charge was extortionate! So she is getting them tomorrow instead. I realise that this may seem a bit cheap-skateish on my part but it did mean that I had more money to spend on flowers that way. I also got cards for the mother-in-law (the husband recently forgot her birthday so I get even more brownie points this way) and both mine and the husbands grandmothers- and yes, I know that I don't have to as they are not our mothers but I did it last year and the grandmother-in-law was tickled pink so I'm repeating it this year. If it makes people happy then it can only be a good thing. And I got to buy this cool card that I can't stop giggling at- silly really aren't I?

Dear me

It seems that I need to blow the dust off of my blog! So quick update- Hoshi is all alright and has even started to grow her fur back. I finally managed to get some knitting done last week though I didn't manage to get the house cleaned (at all). We finally got around to doing some digging in the garden last weekend so I now have a wonky raised border that I shall fill with compost and plant things in and I already have some seeds out in cold frames which I now watch avidly to try and spy the first green shoot. I went through all my seeds the other day and made a really geeky list detailing when they have to planted out and have plans for a wall chart. Other than that all is quiet on the home front. My nana is back home and on the slow yet steady road to recovery.
There are lots of exciting things to come over the next week or so though so watch this space!

Whilst the husband is away....

I'm going to do some knitting!!! The other half has gone away to do a training course which means that I get to have a bit more sleep in the mornings and can spend the evenings doing as much knitting as I like. The house is a complete tip so I do have to do some tidying this week- I have plans to do a room an evening but we will just have to wait to see how far I actually get with that. I have a ton of knitting projects to get done which I am very excited about and it will be really nice to be able to update my blog with pictures of things I have completed rather than just lists of things that I'm in the process of making. I seem to have about 10 projects on the go at the moment and another 20 waiting in the wings. There's piles of wool at home with little tags on to remind me what it is I am supposed to be doing with it it's getting that bad. And at the same time I also have some plans to start doing some proper entomology again- it will be nice to get back to it after having left it so long. It's just finding the time and the energy to do it that's a problem as it means spending extra time in work which is something that doesn't fill me with much joy given the current situation. Having said this it is all change here at the moment though what with the boss retiring and all, so fingers crossed for future fun!

Baby cat

Ahh, my little fuzz ball has gone to the vets to day to have some surgery done :(
Am now worried about her terribly despite the fact that it is a routine operation that they must do on a daily basis. But its different when its your own fur baby. Once she's been neutered though we will be able to let the kittens out to play in the garden whenever they want and she won't have to put up with any pesky boys bothering her all the time. It's just the right time of year as well. As soon as it starts to get light enough in the evenings we will be able to let them out when we get home from work and if they are good and complete their pavlovian training we will be able to let them out during the day as well via the automatic cat flap which I know they will love. I don't think they mind being house cats as they often choose to stay inside even when they are allowed out but I also think that they are getting a bit bored being stuck in the house all day. They are teenage cats now and big enough to look after themselves. They have lots of energy and are trying to put their little paw prints of independence all over the house- so better that they get to do that outside rather than all over my furniture. At the moment they are working on tunneling through the kitchen ceiling (via the flood hole that we inherited when we bought the place) into the bathroom so that they can play upstairs during the day. They obviously need a better outlet for their energies!

Save the Livesey Children's Museum

Eeek! Some twit has decided that it is a good idea to close down the Livesey Children's Museum in Peckham, London so the volunteers who run it and the local people of the area have quite rightly decided to fight this and have put together an on-line petition that everyone should sign.
If you want to have a look at the website for the museum to find out what it is all about and why it would be a complete travisty to close it then you can get to it here.
It is a dedicated children's museum- all the exhibits and exhibitions are designed for children from the ages of 0-12 to help them explore various aspects of the world around us. Having had a good look at the website myself I have to say that it looks wonderful and I can't believe that people are letting budget dictate the closure of a museum that actively encourages children to touch and play with the displays. Its a truely interactive experience for the little people with minimal flashing lights and comuter screens which other museums are employing to capture their little minds. I think kids get enough of staring at screens just through watching TV and playing computer games and its nice to have something that is that bit different from the norm. The museum is due to close in April so its a bit of a long shot as to whether the petition will work but I've added my voice and I think others should as well!

Happy Valentines Day

I'm not one for celebrating Valentines Day- it is a Clintons cards anniversary event after all but today I am having a happy day and thought I would spread the warmth. The husband bought me a special jar of marmite that has champagne in it and then threw in some cheese to make the perfect lunchtime sandwich. Plus I have that really yummy cashmere wool to cuddle all evening and first thing this morning I was presented with a packet of love hearts which was a ridiculously sweet gesture and made me smile like a cheshire cat. We are also planning to go to the cinema this evening to see Sweeny Todd (finally!!!) if we are not too tired (although I am tempted to leave it a day or two as it might be a bit busy tonight). As a happy coincidence I have also been given a tube of erotylids to play with and watched some banjo duels on the internet as a lunchtime treat. Having said all this however I do expect the afternoon to be terribly boring which will be a bit of a downer but have just remembered that there is steak for tea tonight. Mmmmmm, cow.
Oh, and something that everybody must look at is this picture of the sweetest little piglet in the world :)

In his honour

Just in case any of you have any interest in this at all I have patched in a link so that you can visit my soon-to-be-ex boss at his new website.
You can expect to be seeing him on your television sets quite a bit over the coming months. I have to say that I really, really wish him all the best for his new career- I haven't meet anyone with quite so much drive and enthusiasm for a career and he really has pursued this with exemplary amounts of vigour and tenacity. He is technically a Zoologist so expect to see him holding all sorts of weird and wonderful wildlife but especially look out for the insects of which we should see more than anything else. So a great big HOORAY goes out to him, as anyone who can get people interested in insects deserves a great big round of applause. I'm holding out for him getting a spot on 'I'm a Celebrity- Get me out of here!' within the next couple of years. Although some might say that was a little unfair as any insect eating competitions would be a walk over but it would be great to see someone chomping down on some mealworms with relish- in fact, I can imagine him asking for relish, knife, fork and napkin and sitting down as though to dinner!

The reason I am so tired

and have not been able to do my knitting like what I did want, is that I have been trying to cook insects and make marzipan bugs in anticipation of the bosses leaving do this evening. I have failed horribly in everything- it serves me right for being so lazy at the weekend and not making a start on the bugs then, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it.

Anyway, Phase 1 of the plan involved making a great deal of mess as you can see from the picture. I had much fun colouring up lots and lots of marzipan.

So here's a picture of all my equipment ready to go and all my little balls of marzipan which look just wonderful. I think I started getting a bit carried away towards the end as I started making up colours like orange that I had no reason to need but thought might be fun. As it was I didn't need 90% of the marzipan that I coloured up or well over half the tools. D'oh. Phase 2 complete however.


And here's the result of nearly three and a half hours of hard work. I was trying to bake crickets and mealworms and deal with an overly tired husband who had to have coca-cola confiscated from him and hyperactive kittens who kept trying to eat things at the same time in all fairness. It was also a lot more fiddly than anticipated. But I am reasonably pleased with the semi-finished result it has to be said. Half of them still need their wings adding which is going to stress me out later today (I just know it) and there's still the chance that they will look utterly crap once they are placed on the cake. But hey, so what? I did only have four days notice to get this done which left no time for PLANS which are essential for the perfect execution of genius.
I did try baking insects as well. I had every intention of making chocolate dipped crickets but I baked the crickets, ran out of time and then found Fenway with his head in the bowl chomping down on them so that was completely out of the window by that point anyway.
And I burnt the mealworms :(
Stupid receipe had no idea what it was talking about but then I should have known better and checked on them a bit more. They smelt really nice when they where baking- like popcorn. But the crickets made the air all greasy and horrible so I'm not allowed to cook insects in the house anymore. And mealworm and choc chip cookies could have been so nice....

All my wool

As you can see I have been gathering wool lately. Mmmm, wool. The stuff on the left is what I spent all my money on when I was in Cambridge at the weekend- I was out shopping with the best friend (so much fun).
And the stuff on the right is my Valentines present. A day or two early I realise but it wasn't really the most romantic of gifts in the first place seeing as how I picked it, found the website, ordered it and then made the husband enter his bank details. Oh, and I did let him help pick the colours. Am very happy with it however. The plum coloured stuff is cashmere and is just so, so lovely. The rest is for various projects that I now have no excuse not to be moving along with. If I could only find the time to get some sleep and then catch up with all the rest of the stuff I should have done then I will be able to get on with doing my knitting. I have been carrying bags of knitting around for the last four days and done all of 3 rows I think. This has got to change or I am going to go mad!

Apparently

I've just walked past Helena Bonham-Carter and Tim Burton TWICE without realising it. D'oh, d'oh, d'oh. Makes me want to bang my head on the keyboard. Not that this makes a great deal of difference as there is no way in hell that I would have done anything differently but I would have liked to have realised that I had done when I was doing it if that makes sense. They have just been buying things at our museum shop (I did wonder why the staff where looking all sparky and giggling a bit) but I was more bothered about trying to make my way through the annoying group of people that is always gathered in our tiny shop and blocking the route from the stairs to the porters desk to which I had just been called in order to identify a miscellaneous package. For some reason it was assumed to be mine- like I'm the only person who orders weird stuff over the internet!
Anyway, yes, so there you go. I've officially been within the same cube of air as the aforementioned celebrities. Which on refelection is hugely exciting as I am a massive fan of both of them and have a hankering to grow up and have mad hair like they do. As it is I shall just have to make do with posthumous knowledge that is dusted with a fine layer of relief that they didn't have Johnny in tow because then I really would have been fantastically pissed off about the whole thing. I'm a bit disappointed that I didn't have my arm display out for them to admire however as I think that they would be the sort of people who would have found it interesting. This is assuming that they came upstairs to look at the insects of course. Hang on, what am I talking about? OF COURSE they came upstairs to see the insects! As if they wouldn't have!....

Hoshi is a lady now

My little kitten is experiencing her first bout of hormones and now she is looking for a nice young male pussy cat to slink around the back of the shed with. You can tell this by the way she is yrowling every two minutes and running up to the doors if you look like you are leaving the house. There is also much tail wiggling and preening of fur. Aah, my baby is all grown up. It's like having a teenager in the house who is just starting to date and stay out late on Saturday nights. As long as she doesn't start drinking cider and shouting 'I hate you! You don't understand me' then all will be well.
I must admit that I am having to avoid the temptation to 'accidentally' leave the back door open so that we can have a few more kittens around the house. But I can't do that if only because I would not be able to give them away and then we'd end up with hundreds of them and I would become a mad old cat lady before reaching 30. That and the husband may leave me :)

Bouncing grandmothers

Apologies for the unnatural and eeire silence that had fallen over my blog for the last couple of days or so. My nana had a fall last thursday and broke her hip so my mind has been occupied with worrying about that. She was out walking when she fell and luckily, managed to slip on some ice in front of some other people who where out walking. I say luckily as it was bloody cold the day she was out and had she not been spotted then there could have been all sorts of horrible consequences due to exposure etc. As it was she was in an ambulance and on her way to hospital within about 10 minutes. Two days later she had had her operation to fix all the broken bits and the latest news has it that she is recovering well in hospital, if a little slowly. This means that my brain is allowed to think of other things occassionally though that mostly consists of 'ow' at the moment as I make it onto day 5 of my headache. I am very impressed by this, if somewhat pained, but I bought myself an Audible subscription this morning to cheer myself up so now I can listen to Terry Pratchett novels whilst waiting for the top of my head to unscrew itself. This months treat is 'Jingo' as I hadn't read it in ages and had a bit of craving for a Sam Vimes story. Next month I'm really going to struggle as there are too many other titles to pick from but I'm thinking Carpe Jugulum at the moment. Check back in about 5 mins to see what I have decided to get instead- and then in about 5 mins after that....