When you’re trying to do some sewing and the cat arrives

Me: Cat, I was actually trying to quilt this –

 Cat: OMG LOOK WHAT YOU MADE FOR ME 

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Jeremy Corbyn “going to live on a nice farm somewhere”, Tom Watson confirms

BREAKING: Jeremy Corbyn is “going to live on a lovely big farm with lots of room to run around and plenty of nice people to play with,” Tom Watson has told the Parliamentary Labour Party.

“Of course we all love Jeremy,” Watson explained, “but we all know he hasn’t been happy here for a while now, and we have to think about what’s best for him. So I’ve arranged to have him sent straight off to his new home on the farm. Really nice farm. Nicest farm in the country – no, I’m not crying. Why would I be crying? I’m really happy for Jeremy. This is definitely the best thing. Definitely.”

Watson then left the podium, claiming he “had got something in his eye” and joined a man with a kind smile and a large syringe waiting in the wings.

Watson was later heard sobbing loudly into his handkerchief and declaring that Corbyn “had always been so full of life” and “no-one can ever take his place”, before commencing a frantic search on Politicians4Homes.

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Conversations with my cats: Door

MY HOUSE, INT, DAY. I AM IN THE LIVING-ROOM, GETTING SOME WORK DONE. OUTSIDE, THE SUN IS SHINING.

Stripeycat: I need you to open the door.

Me: The door’s already open.

Stripeycat: No, the other door. I need you to open the other door.

Me: You want me to open the front door?

Stripeycat: I do.

Me: Even though the back door is already open?

Stripeycat: That’s right.

Me: And you know that the front door and the back door both open onto the garden?

Stripeycat: Yaas.

Me: So you’re going out of the front door. Not the open back door. Or the open downstairs window. But the front door. Which is closed. So you need me to open it.

Stripeycat: Your point being?

Me: No point really. Just checking. There you go.

Stripeycat: ‘kaythanksbye, I’ll bring you back a dead mouse!

Me: No thanks, I really don’t want a –

STRIPEYCAT LEAPS ACROSS GARDEN AND IMMEDIATELY RETURNS TO HOUSE THROUGH OPEN BACK DOOR

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Buckingham Palace, Tuesday

Metropolitan Police Commander Lucy D’Orsi meeting the Queen during a Buckingham Palace Garden party

D of E: Hey Liz at the party shall I do you and you do me
Her Maj: Sure why not
D of E: Got the idea off Cammo and Boris

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-36263685

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The Part You Throw Away: Toiletries Gift Set

From a distance, toiletries gift sets look like a totally logical gift choice. They’re about the right price. They come in pretty colours. They’re easy to wrap and when you’ve wrapped them, they look pleasing and substantial. Every Christmas you can guarantee at least one will pass through your household. Then you get a bit closer, and it all turns weird.

Take the box off the last toiletries gift set you got. (Go on. I’ll wait.) Now look at what you have. Some sort of soap. Some sort of soap application device, which takes up an unfeasible amount of room and doubles as a great place to culture spores, moulds and fungus. Some sort of cream to smear on yourself afterwards. A scent that may or may not suit you. A toiletries gift set is one of your relatives saying to you, with great conviction and sincerity, “YOU SHOULD SMELL LIKE THIS.”

To be clear, I don’t think it’s always wrong to tell someone how they ought to smell. When my husband buys me perfume (“YOU SHOULD SMELL LIKE MARC JACOBS DAISY”), I find it delightfully masterful. The implication that he will be sniffing my skin later and liking it is pretty damn sexy. I feel the same when I buy him aftershave (“YOU SHOULD SMELL LIKE HUGO BOSS”). It’s grooming and possessiveness and intimacy and nice expensive things, all topped off with a ribbon.

It’s just that it seems…kind of intimate. I’m not comfortable with the idea of dictating the fragrance of someone I wouldn’t get naked with. How have toiletries gift sets become the safe and socially-acceptable way to let relatives we see six times in a decade know that we’re thinking about them? And what does FCUK smell like anyway?

“YOU SHOULD SMELL LIKE – yeah, maybe not.”

Oh, I know; I’m missing the point. The point is not the cream, the soap, the soap application device. The point is how these three things look when put together in their luxurious oversized carton, and the brief but beautiful thrill of the Christmas Shiny Thing. They’re about the beautiful fonts and the extravagant cut-outs and the gold embossing, and the way everything glitters under the Christmas lights when you unwrap them. They’re not meant to be examined at close quarters. I bet there were a lot of toiletries gift sets on the shelves of the Looking Glass shop.

Maybe this is why toiletries gift sets lend themselves so well to recycling. A few months ago, I won a toiletries gift set (“YOU SHOULD SMELL LIKE GRAPESEEDS AND POMEGRANATES”) at a Church tombola. When I got it home, I discovered it had not one, not two, but three scraps of sellotape, all complete with a residual coating of raffle-ticket, stuck at various spots on the box. I was clearly not the first person to win this toiletries gift set. It had spent time adorning many bathroom shelves, safe in its beautiful box, untouched and glittery and glorious. It was a gift set with history. And now that history included me. I liked that. I kept it for a while, then sent it on to the school fete to continue its journey.

Every year, I buy a toiletries gift set for my mother in law (“YOU SHOULD SMELL LIKE ROSES”), and every year, I feel guilty for not being more imaginative. My mother-in-law – who has already given me half of my husband and a quarter of my children – also buys me gifts that are genuinely awesome. She often buys me the second book in an ongoing series, because she sincerely believes I have read almost everything, and therefore must have read the first one. She buys me things with pictures of cats on, because I love cats. One year, she found a present she knew would be right in my gift-receiving sweet spot; an encyclopaedia of cat breeds. She is a gift-giver who really studies her audience and is not afraid to take risks.

And in return, I bottle out and buy her toiletries gift sets. She always seems pleased, but I always look at them and think, Could do better.

The week before Christmas 2015 found me at a garden centre with my two best friends and a killer hangover. Our office Christmas party had left me so uncoordinated that when I dropped my gloves on the floor, I burst into tears and begged my friend to pick them up for me. When I recovered from this, I found I was staring at a display of scented drawer liners.

My mother-in-law had recently bought herself a new chest of drawers. This was a gift item designed to go inside chests of drawers. They were in a pretty box. They were not a toiletries gift set. I didn’t even need to bend down to get hold of them. It was clearly meant to be.

When I came to wrap them, I was no longer hungover, and it occurred to me that scented drawer liners were potentially even more oddly intimate than the toiletries gift set that I had – of course – also bought for her. But by then it was Christmas Eve, and it was too late to change my mind. I watched as she unwrapped them. Were the scented drawer liners (“YOUR PANTS SHOULD SMELL LIKE THIS”) a step too far?

“These are wonderful!” she declared. “I didn’t even know you could still get them! Thank you so much! And they match my toiletries as well! Oh, how lovely! I am spoiled.”

Rose-scented toiletries gift set; £18.99. Rose-scented drawer-liners: £9.99. Getting my mother-in-law something that makes her feel spoiled at Christmas; priceless.

Of course, it’s possible she is just very good at faking happiness, and the drawer liners and the toiletries set will shortly become regulars on the Church Bazaar circuit. But when I hugged her, she smelled all warm and floral and delicious. It was the rose-scented toiletries I’d bought her last year.

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A Haiku about Tuesday

I wish that I was
Someone whose spaghetti fits
Neatly in the pan.

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British People Problems

A teacake

Also a teacake

AND YET WE ALL ACCEPT THIS AS REASONABLE

NO WONDER THE FRENCH HAVE NO RESPECT FOR US

HOW WAS THIS ALLOWED TO HAPPEN

THIS IS HOW SOCIETY ENDS. I’M NOT HAPPY ABOUT IT BUT THAT’S WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN

OH, AND HAPPY NEW YEAR AND THANKS TO ALL MY LOVELY FOLLOWERS. I PROMISE TO BLOG MORE THIS YEAR AND BE FUNNY AND STUFF.

–ends–

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My son drew a picture of Bear Grylls proposing to his wife

My son takes an interest in Bear Grylls. Partly because he himself was almost called “Bear”; partly because Bear Grylls climbs big mountains and eats gross stuff on TV. But these days, it’s mostly because it has recently come to his attention that Bear Grylls proposed to his wife by pulling her engagement ring out from between his bum-cheeks while skinny-dipping.

This was his other idea for making it a really special and memorable moment.

My son thought this was awesome, because he is eight and it involves extensive discussion of the bum-cheeks of someone he admires, so of course he did. So awesome, in fact, that he decided to draw a picture of it.

He drew this at bedtime, while allegedly listening to me reading The Famous Five. I’m not sure why it’s meant to be read right to left, but maybe he was channeling his inner Manga artist.

As you can see, it comes in three distinct parts. The first part is the moment of the proposal:

There’s clearly some thought gone into this. It contains all the essential elements of a really good marriage proposal, as understood by an eight-year-old boy. Bear is down on one knee, because that’s the proper way to propose to someone. There’s some sort of disturbing phallic symbolism going on with Bear’s arms. The ring is gigantic (I bet Bear was glad to get that bad boy out from storage, Christ). His future wife is smiling, because she’s so happy to be proposed to. Naturally, she’s asking the question all newly-engaged women ask at such a moment: “Where did you get it!” And Bear, also smiling, proudly replies, “From my butt”.

I will admit that’s a much more memorable answer than “Beaverbrooks”.

By the way, my son and I are both painfully aware that he has spelt “Where” wrong. Sometimes in the white heat of artistic creation, these things slip through the net.

The next piece of the picture is a bit more mysterious:

My son’s best explanation of this is that it was “some of my homework that I had to cross out”, accompanied by the mysterious smile that means he doesn’t want to discuss it any further. As far as I can tell, it’s a picture of a pyramid with an eye on the top, and the inscription “50 gerfit” scrawled across the bottom. Maybe they were studying Masonic initiation rituals.

And now the final piece of the triptych, which shows Bear happily contemplating what he’s just achieved:

“I got my ring from my butt.” Well, yes you did, Bear. Yes you did.

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First World Problems

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Cornish Blue Blanket: In Which I Have A Bit Of A Ma Ingalls Moment

Sometimes, I knit or sew stuff. For the last few months, I’ve been knitting a blanket, inspired by Cornish Blue pottery in general, and my Cornish Blue gravy-jug in particular.

Quite a few Facebook friends have asked for the pattern, so here it is. It’s free to use, share, adapt and generally distribute to anyone who fancies a copy – although if you are sharing publicly, a credit would be very much appreciated.

Materials

Wool: I knitted this in Sirdar DK Snuggly, in Denim (shade 326) and Cream (shade 303). I’m honestly not sure how many balls of each colour I used, because I basically make my craft projects up as I go and I had to restock halfway through – but I think I used about a dozen 50g balls of each colour. If you’re looking for a good place to buy, I really like Wool Warehouse.

Needles: this is knitted on 4.5mm, extra long (40cm) needles, like these. 40cm long needles can be annoying to work with, so as an alternative you can also knit this on circular needles, like these.

Finished project size: the finished blanket will fit a single bed. It also makes a nice sofa throw.

Stitch: the blanket’s knitted in British Moss Stitch (in the US this is called Seed Stitch), which makes a lovely nubbly texture that feels gorgeous. It’s a dead simple stitch to do. First, you cast on an even number of stitches. Then on the odd rows, it’s Knit One, Purl One; and on the even rows, it’s Purl One, Knit One.

How to make:

1. Cast on 260 stitches in cream wool. You can make your blanket wider or narrower by varying the number of stitches – but it is very important that the total number of stitches is an even number.

2. Knit twenty rows in British Moss Stitch:
K1, P1 on the Odd rows
P1, K1 on the Even rows

3. At the end of Row 20, change to blue wool.

4. Knit twenty rows in British Moss Stitch:
K1, P1 on the Odd rows
P1, K1 on the Even rows

(You’ll find that your transition rows between the stripes will be a lovely mini-stripe as the front of the stitch alternates between the front and the back, like this.)

5. Knit alternate 20-row stripes of blue and white until you’re happy with the size of your blanket, finishing with a white stripe. My blanket is 29 stripes long.

6. Cast off, and weave in the ends.

And that’s it! It’s quite a big project so it does take a while, but it’s not technically challenging at all – if you can knit, purl and count then this is definitely do-able. If you have a go, I’d love you see the finished project, so do please leave links or photos in the comments.

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