often seen in the street without a hat

I went to the bookswap yesterday, which Nuala hosted in her lovely house. I made cinnamon brownie muffins, which are chewy and rather nice, and tried to make mini doughnut muffins (milk-free), which were a failure. Today I might do some more baking and take it into work. I was going to make gammon and pear casserole, but I think it uses sweet potato, which I forgot to buy any of.

I was comparatively restrained and only came away with 9 books, one of which was knitting patterns, so doesn't even really count.



I feel I have a nice mix there. I recently went through my shelves to winnow down the amount on them, and took out all the ones I wouldn't want to either reread or refer back to or lend to someone else, or just have to have them. What I also did was take off all the things I want to keep but haven't read, and piled them up on the floor to have at hand. I'm trying to work through these before buying new books or rereading books. Here they are:



So that's 151 books I need to read (not including the separate books within one set of covers). I do want to read all of them, at some point, just... not as much as I want all the other books in the world as well.

( Here are the books in more detail if you wanted to see. )

The bookswap also featured a yarnswap. There was a lot of beautiful yarn - I got some kidsilk haze, which I've never knitted with before, some light green merino, some lovely Chilean variegated alpaca, and enough gold silk yarn and beads to make an amazing beaded shawl. Now I have sorted through all my yarn (something I should probably have done properly beforehand), and I really, really have to start some projects. I have three aborted projects to finish frogging, and a cardigan that I have been stalled on for FIVE MONTHS. The pattern is wrong, and I'm at the same bit for the fifth time of starting where I have finished the chart, and I need to start calculating for bust darts, but it's also the bit where I'll find out if it's too big AGAIN and probably have to start again. I was determined not to let the pattern beat me, but I'm not sure I can bear starting again.

So in order to get back in to knitting I think I'm going to start an entirely new project to get me back into the swing of it. Unfortunately my ravelry browsing has mostly led me to patterns I love for yarn I don't have, and that is not at all the point.

Maybe I could make these pretty fingerless mitterns, probably in some fyperspates sparkly sock yarn I got in the yarn swap anglaisepaon ran a few years ago. Or does anyone have an idea of what I could make with 1300m of Kidsilk haze? or 800m of drops Alpaca? or 700m of merino fingering? or, ooh, 1500m of dk linen? THERE IS TOO MUCH CHOICE AND NEVER ENOUGH YARN.

Oh man, I really want to see the art exhibition about nude men, but I cannot find a reasonable way to get to Vienna before it closes that is a) less than £500, and b) less than 2 days travel. Oh, my life is so hard (snigger). Well, I could fly to Munich for about £220, and then get trains, but the timings mean that I'd have to spend two nights in Vienna, but really only have one day to do anything, which seems excessive in terms of time and money spent. I shall have to get my arty fix of penes another way.

I made a pork and apple casserole last night. I haven't had any as it was for freezing for lunches, but I tried one of the bits of pork, and it was drear and tasteless. Is there a way of cooking pork that makes it actually taste nice? Is it about the bits of meat you use? I would like to go on something like a wine tasting course, but for meat.

Hey Clare, looking forward to the bookswap?
Yes, hugely!

I understand you're in charge of food.
Yep, just went to Tesco, got bread, stuff to put in/on bread, some strawberries and other things. Oh, and I just made "snickerdoodles".

I think people know what snickerdoodles are, you don't have to quote it.
That's not why I quoted it.

Ah. Did they go wrong?
Very wrong.

Are you still going to take them to the bookswap?
Yep.

Do you expect people to eat them?
God no.

And you're taking them because?
I feel bad that other bookswaps had awesome food and lots of homemade stuff, and I went to Tesco, and am too incompetent to make snickerdoodles. So I'm taking them to prove that I tried. And you know the worst thing?

I ASK THE QUESTIONS HERE.
Sorry.

What is the worst thing about it?
I still had to wash up the utensils I used to make the world's worst cookies. Normally at least you get a warm glow of satisfaction to temper the annoyance at having to clean.

Sorry.
Yeah.

I am reading The Far Side of the World. Jack has sent to see if Stephen wants to come and watch chase. Stephen is below deck cataloguing some beetles, and the reply comes: "he says that if he is given a direct order to come and enjoy himself in the cold driving rain if not sleet too as well as a tempest of wind he will of course be delighted to obey." By which I mean of course that I hope everyone who chose to go out tonight has a lovely time. But more than that I hope everyone else is allowed to catalogue their beetles undisturbed.

I have finished off the level of Angry Birds that stalled me for two days! Now I have a bird that turns into a BOMB.

My mum told me there was extra milk in the garage, but I could only find wine. I ran the milk to ground in the freezer. I have had Alpen which always seems like it's going to be more filling than it is. I have eaten all the smoked salmon. Perhaps a turkey sandwich next.

This post, which I found on friendsfriends, is really annoying me! I know that I know the poem too, and yet I cannot think where it is from. It's not in either of the Milne children's poetry collections I have. Can any of you put me out of my misery?

I have half-finished drafts of about four posts, but I am posting a meme in lieu of actual content.

1. What is your occupation right now?

I am a student. I am trying to convince myself that I am a full-time student and should therefore be devoting more time than I am to writing in order to finish, while at the same time trying to convince the Jobcentre that I am a student in name alone and they should definitely give me some benefits. We shall see what they think of the letter my department wrote saying that I have no contact hours.

( 31 further questions of similar insight. )

Chocolate cake, yes. (I have just made one and had a breakfast of bowl scrapings.) Chocolate and orange cake, ooh! But chocolate and orange POTATO cake, I do not think.

(I mean, I would totally try some if the opportunity arose. But potato cakes are those savoury fried things in breakfasts sometimes - they are NOT for chocolate.)

A poll for a morning, a Thursday morning, apparently, which means that I must remember to buy the Guardian to get the booklet about Freshers Week.

[Poll #1446248]

And I would have posted about this horrible review in the Independent before if I'd been here. I haven't seen The Girlfriend Experience, though it sounds interesting, and I've no idea if his other criticisms are valid, but this:

One of them, the elephantine Tessa (Debbie Chazen) giggles nervously about going to see a play that she's in.
There's no point in not saying that these huge and unappetising women come across as being incredibly sad and curiously stupid, with their whale-like lolloping around

is fairly vile no matter what.

The cervix is a lot rounder than I imagined. I was reading Belly Tales, and she linked to a blog where a woman took photos of her cervix every day through a cycle and posted them. Really cool.


I went to see Act Your Age recordings again with humanfemale. One of the guests was Stan Boardman. Sample joke: "I took my wife out the other night. One punch." It was all quite hideous and racist and horrible. He wouldn't stop talking. It didn't get any better. On the train on the way home I read the Virgin magazine, and in an interview (so not even with his "ironic" persona), Jimmy Carr described Nadia Almada as "the she-male". I'm not going to tag this entry as comedy, it's not true.

But I did have some very nice fried chicken, so a trip not entirely composed of bigotry.


I have a lump on the back of my head. I don't know how it got there, and it's quite tender when I poke at it, which I do quite a bit. Hopefully eventually this week my room will be finished and I can move everything back. This morning I woke up to shadowy shapes in my curtained window and thumps on the roof. Then there was a pause, and a voice said "uh, looks like there's a problem here...". So let's just not think about that. I got invited to someone's house for roast dinner on Sunday. I am looking forward to the beef.

( Michael McIntyre )

( Booths )

Pirate cereal! I am quite seriously thinking about stocking up in case it vanishes again. Of course, since the films are over (dear god, don't let them do any more), it's bound to go away quite soon anyway, but while there're product cards in the plasticky bits on the shelves, there's hope.

Last night I was woken up twice - once by a young man right under my window at 4am, asking his friend very loudly if they were going back to his for a smoke (I did not catch the reply), and then about an hour later when my finger started throbbing after what looks like a small insect bite. Boo.

On Radio 4 this morning, the presenter pronounced "schedule" as "skedule", and immediately corrected himself and apologised with a slightly panicked air about him, and said "I had to do that because there'll be letters". Quite right.

Today I am teaching a workshop on essay writing skills. I don't actually possess essay writing skills, but I do have a Plan.

Tonight I am going to see I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue with nerdcakes. Brilliant.

Is there anything better than being really quite hungry, yet too lazy to go downstairs to get food, and then unexpectedly finding half a bag of gummy sweets in the folds of the duvet? I have to say no, there isn't.

Via ankaret - You Don't Have to Be Pretty. I love this. I have a friend who persists in saying things like "oh, she would look so much better in a nice pencil skirt" and telling me that I should wear more brown instead of black, when I love black, and also rather hate pencil skirts.