Duck Walk

It rained so hard this morning that my jeans were thoroughly soaked from the knee down by the time I got back from having tea with Sandy (my mother-in-law - it'll just be so much easier to call her by name from now on).  Within ten minutes of shedding my wet clothes and pulling on pajamas, the clouds parted and there was the blue sky I didn't think we'd see at all today. 

So I decided to go for a walk, feed some ducks and take a few pictures.  For this outing I packed the following:

 

- a shopping bag in case I decided to stop at the Oxam bookshop in my way home.  I did and picked up Vanity Fair and the first book in the Sookie Stackhouse series.  I'm almost embarrassed to admit that I'm already two-thirds through it and am already thinking about hunting down the second. 

- a teeny, tiny, bright green moleskine

- my Filofax wallet

- my everyday camera

- my mouse change purse

- my Canon camera.  When I turned it on I realized I'd left its SD card in my computer - thank goodness I had my little camera with me.

- bright pink Clarins lip gloss tossed in for some unknown reason

- camera lens

- duck food.  Unfortunately, this is really only for feeding ducks whilst they are on dry land (it sinks in water) and most ducks automatically start quacking like crazy and hop in the water when they think you have food.  Needless to say, a couple of pigeons were fed by me today but no ducks.

- my iPod.  Soundtrack to my walk: Strict Joy by The Swell Season.  If I were a little less sane, I might have thought I was really in a movie. 

Of course, by the time I got to the park, it started raining again but it was light enough that I stood under a giant willow and stayed dry.  

I took a lot of photos but only kept a couple.  It's hard to go wrong with the cathedral and blue sky.

Or a cookie cutter cathedral...

I also really like the texture of the wall surrounding the cathedral....

I'm listening to Pillars of the Earth right now and it was really interesting to hear the bits that took place in Salisbury as they were building the "new" cathedral (this one).  Even though a few people have recommended it, I've shied away from that book for a long time thinking it would be too slow and heavy like books about that time period sometimes tend to be.  I bought it for $5 on Audible a few months ago but I only started listening to it last week after I (finally) finished The Road.  I'm only a couple hours in (it's 41 hours long) but it's fantastic and not at all what I expected.  

Okay, some french fries (see?  I'm still an American!), a warm blanket and the rest of Dead Until Dark are waiting for me downstairs....

You'll Have That

It was "you'll have that" afternoon today.  We walked into town to buy National Trust memberships and then drove out to Stourhead for a nice, chilly, autumn walk.  Unfortunately, though, we were about ten miles away when Matt said, "I know this is a silly question but you do have our membership paper, right?" 

Argh.  No.  Instead of sticking it in my purse, I had dropped it in our shopping bag (a cute burlap one we'd actually purchased at the National Trust shop a few weeks ago that says "Truly Madly Greenly") and that shopping bag was sitting on the floor in our sitting room.  A few minutes later we saw a sign for Longleat and decided to salvage our day by taking a drive through the safari park.  Last year it closed the day before I came to visit Matt and we just assumed that it would be closing around the same time this year which would be next weekend. Unfortunately, we were wrong.  It closed this past weekend.  

So, yeah, you'll have that.

But Matt had spent the weekend at work and will be working a lot more this week so it was at least nice to spend the day together.  

And we got back just in time to have a fun little photo shoot by the cathedral.

 

 

Susie's Reading Mitts

Poems Yarn

US 5 / 3.75 mm dpn needles

Very cosy!

 

This Week I....

:: baked flapjacks.  Twice.  I'm tweaking a recipe I found online so both batches were radically different.  They only last about a day around here so I think I might make another attempt tonight.

:: finished my mitts.  I wasn't even going to try to take a photo by myself so I'll have Matt help me out tomorrow.

:: went to knit group - can't wait until next month.

:: finished my FLS at knit group.  It needs a serious blocking and buttons but I'm happy with it.  Now it's back to knitting Buddy's sweater.

:: read Revolutionary Road and loved it. 

:: got a haircut and love it.

:: toyed with the idea of doing NaNoWriMo.  Still haven't decided but if I were going to, this would be the year to do it.  The whole idea thing is a real hang up, though....

:: watched Gladiator for the first time and liked it.  I've wanted to watch it ever since we went to Rome.  It was good - a little gorier than I'd expected - but I wanted to see more of the Coliseum. 

:: had my first pasty - onion and cheese.  It was okay but I'm not in a real hurry to have another one or anything.

Yipes, just enough time to make a cup of tea - it's freezing in here and I turned the heat on at least an hour ago - before I do a Skype chat with Mom and Dad! 

Magazine Swap?

Anyone from back in the states interested in swapping a UK knitting mag and assorted goodies for the Interweave Knits Fall 2009 issue?  I can't find it around here and the online shipping cost is more than double what it would actually cost.  And a swap would be more fun.  :)

Happy Halloween!  I'm thinking about dressing as a tourist and going outside with my camera for a bit....

Terrible Allergies are Making Me Use This Title

Yesterday we moved the seemingly unwieldy jumble of boxes from the conservatory to the spare bedroom.  Suddenly, they didn't seem so unwieldy at all.  It was as if each box shrunk as we carried it upstairs.  It just makes sense to have the boxes in a room where none of the contents are staying so that each box can be carried out and unpacked in its proper room.  Plus, I can just shut the door and pretend the boxes aren't there at all!

That also means we have the conservatory back.  After a little cleaning and decorating, it'll be nice to be able to sit at the table and have tea and Sunday papers.  And, seeing as how this is my first Thanksgiving as a married lady, I'd also like to make some sort of Thanksgiving dinner for us this year and having a proper dining room to eat in is kind of required. 

And, no, the irony of having my first married Thanksgiving in England is not lost on me.   

It's beginning to look and feel a little more like home around here.  There are new throws on the sofas and a vase of dahlias and I even unpacked my favorite piece of art and set it on the mantle.  

(an old photo because I hate the idea of a post without one)

Thank goodness I found a husband who didn't flinch at all when I asked he felt about this picture and if we could, maybe, at least temporarily anyway, hang it above the fireplace. 

Matt's doing an overnight at work again and I really wanted use this time to get a lot more done around here but an allergy attack has caused me to spend most of the evening reading Revolutionary Road (so good) and staring across the room in a hazy stupor.  That said, I'm going to bed early.  My mother-in-law and my sister-in-law. Ruth, who's down from Bath for a couple of days, are coming into town tomorrow morning and I'm going to meet them for a cup of tea and, I suspect, a little shopping.  Plus I'm oddly excited about getting a haircut tomorrow - it's been awhile.

Do you ever write a post and think, "Should I even bother to post this, for Pete's sake?"  Yeah, that's how I feel about this one but I'm going to publish it anyway. 

Huh, rather than "publish" I typed "pretty" (and fixed it, of course) - I need to go to bed. 

I Really Am a Knitter

A few days ago I joined a group over on Ravelry called The Blog Hub for knitting blogs and then realized that, even though it's nearly the biggest word over there in my category cloud, this blog hasn't seen a bit of knitting in a long time.  So just to prove that I really do knit, a post about knitting.

I bound off the body of my FLS, literally, minutes ago.  After seeing how pretty Ginny's was turning out and then how it actually turned out, I went into FLS overdrive.  I had started this back in the summer but packed it in Matt's suitcase when he went home in June after the wedding assuming that I'd be able to pick it back up in three weeks and have it finished for fall.  Of course, things didn't really work out that way and it stayed in his suitcase up until a week or two ago when I finally pulled it out and got on with it.

 

It might go into slight hibernation because I think my size eight double points are in one of the many boxes downstairs marked CRAFT SUPPLIES.  I'm afraid to check the stash I either didn't ship or bought over the summer for fear that I won't find any but but kind of figure I'll attack the boxes tomorrow if that's the case.  I think I might have even marked the box they're in with an extra KNITTING NEEDLE label because I've moved enough to know that it's good to make sure the things you'll need are easy to find.  

When I got here last month I started on the Beachcomber Bag.  One word: bobbles.  It's in hibernation until I finish the FLS, Buddy's sweater and maybe a bit more of the Gooseberry Cardigan which is in the early, not worth photographing stages.  

It's pretty, though, and I like the yarn quite a bit.

One last, non-knitting photo.  I found that living here requires you to carry a change purse as well as a wallet since, instead of dollar bills, there are pound and two pound coins which means you're almost guaranteed to be carrying around a some times not so small stash of change.  It took a lot of searching but I finally found the perfect one yesterday...meet the Elusive Purse Mouse.  

On the Way to Fishterton Mill

Yesterday I decided I didn't care if I looked like a tourist and took some photos I've been meaning to take for awhile along our walk to Fisherton Mill - a place that I've been meaning to blog about for awhile. 

I love these clever flower pots.  It's a great idea garden idea for those of you who happen to have a couple of cracked kayaks and a tiny, leaky rowboat just lying around.

 

This is my favorite storefront - abandoned or otherwise - and not just because it's shades of my favorite color although that's probably what initially caught my eye.  I wonder what it looked like inside when it was still open for business.  I'm afraid it's going to be purchased one day and, unless it's bought by a family called Knight that wants to sell fish and poultry, the front will be destroyed. 

To the right is a cute little gift shop/Cath Kidston reseller called Lulu's.  We stopped in yesterday to see if they had her cute mini agenda books in stock but, unfortunately, that's one of the few things you can only buy in an actual Cath Kidston shop. 

Now on to The Mill.  Matt and I went to Fisherton Mill on my very first day in Salisbury back in November of last year.  I guess you would call it our first date even though we'd known each other via email and phone calls for a little over three months.  

I remember sitting across from him, just as nervous as can be, wanting to hold his hand as it sat there on the table top, just an inch and a half from mine, but just being too afraid.  We'd only hugged at the airport, after all.  Even though it was clear that we were crazy about one another before I'd arrived, it was a little different once we met in real life.  I was mad about him in person as well and attempted to put out little signals but I wasn't sure how he felt.  Matt was too gentlemanly to be too forward and make a move and, obviously, my signals must have really been a bit weak because he wasn't picking them up at all.  We worked it out eventually - although, considering that we're married and I've moved 4,000 miles to a new country to be with him, that's probably pretty obvious.

Up until yesterday we've managed to always sit at that same first table.

The Mill is half cafe, half gallery and gift shop with works by local artists.  My favorite thing about the Mill, though, is their flapjacks.

I've yet to make my own flapjacks but I have a tin of Golden Syrup downstairs that's just waiting for some oats and a good recipe.  I tried making them when I lived in the states using honey, I think, because we don't have Golden Syrup and they were disastrous.  Little burnt hockey pucks.  Tomorrow, though, I'm hoping to have a post about the honey toffee I made with GS and an insane amount of honey but we're still waiting for it to harden.  I wanted to make some to take to Guy Fawkes/Bonfire Night and am glad I decided to give it a test run (i.e. excuse to make something sweet) otherwise I would have made it the day of and it never would have been ready to break up and take with us. 

That other chocolaty thing was a hedgehog cake.  Good but not as good as the flapjack!

Here's another kind of blurry shot of the cafe.  The gift shop part is the glaringly bright section.

 

Matt bought me a cute pair of tiny heart shaped earrings and these adorable buttons/badges (more things are called something else here than you realize).

 

Speaking of cute - there was an insanely cute King Charles Spaniel (I only know this because there was one in Buddy's puppy class) under the table next to us.  Matt even offered to ask if I could take a photo because I was too shy but I just don't think they would've understood why I wanted to take a picture like that - something mundane yet, I think, as cute as a well behaved dog under a table.  I need to get over worrying about what other people think and being shy because now I wish I had taken the photo!

I avoided being the Uber Tourist and didn't snap one of the red telephone box in the close on our way into town.  I have to admit, though...I did take one of those on that very first trip nearly one year ago but I really was a tourist back then. :)

Matt needs to get to back to work so I'm going to surrender the computer - maybe tomorrow I'll actually catch up on my emails....