Not feng shui

I just harvested my first beet. It's really big, look!There are more that size and I'm trying to let them grow but this one looked like it was going to flower, which it shouldn't since it's a bi-annual (bi-ennial? Bi-something) so it shouldn't flower till next spring but there we are. I think I'm going to roast it and make beet houmous...or maybe some borscht.
I also got new books from the library today that I'm excited about. I love the library, as I may have said before. I always have books and dvds strewn about my coffee table which I think is bad feng shui (plus it means when I am sitting on the sofa I actually have to pick up the remote control to point it over the stack at the tv - I find this distressingly hard work). This is what I have right now (neatly stacked for the purposes of the photograph):
1. (open) The Irresistable Revolution by Shane Claiborne (token Christian book) - a guy who thinks it's more important to hang out with homeless people than polish pews. Imagine.

2. The Man Who Found Time: James Hutton and the Discovery of Earth's Antiquity by Jack Repcheck - about the average Scottish Joe who dared to suggest perhaps the earth was a wee bit more than 6000 years old.

3. The Best Soups - I like soup.

4. Watching the English by Kate Fox - recently recommended to me as an ethnographic study of the 'English'. I'm intrigued.

5. The Idiot's Guide to Jams, Jellies and Preserves - because, like an idiot, I think I'm going to be making lots of jam this summer.

6. Moosewood Restaurant Daily Special - I like their recipe books, for when I feel vegetarian.

(and on your right)

7. Aviator dvd - never seen it, might watch it, might not. It's free.

8. Mystic River dvd - recently recommended as a 'thought-provoking' movie although I think it's quite grim so I'm not sure I'll get around to it. Not on the stack any more is 'Lars and the Real Girl' that I watched yesterday, and thought was excellent. Check that one out, why don't you.

9. In Praise of Slow: how a worldwide movement is challenging the cult of speed by Carl Honore. - I'm hoping there's a chapter on why procrastination is a good thing.

10. I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou - because I've never read it and happened to see it on the shelf.

11. 200 of the Best Brownies, Bars and Squares - because the past few weeks financial constraints have prevented me from baking (and from almost all grocery shopping) but this week I can breathe a little easier so wanted inspiration.

12. Gordon Ramsey's Great British Pub Food - A lot of these recipes are too posh for me but I wanted a good Toad in the Hole recipe.

13. Baking Unplugged by Nicole Rees - I've already started marking pages with bits of paper - I'd like to try clafouti, just for the name.

So there you go, a snapshot of my library habits. in other news, my dining table here is strewn with academic papers and notes as it hasn't been since book-writing finished. I'm giving a paper at a conference in August and I haven't written it yet. Good times. It's on American Sign Language which I don't actually know, so that makes it extra fun. I have found this cool website for learning signs. Be sure to look up the sign for 'overweight', it's funny.

Impossibly clever

I defy you not to smile at this:

Sunday surfing

I like this website a lot. It has things like this:and this:This last quote reminds of an episode of the lovely Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends I just saw on 'self-fulfillment' but it's really too hot and humid in here right now to tell you about it. RAIN, ALREADY, PLEASE! (And maybe some thunder too).
Remind me another day.

My space

I finally remembered to take my phone to the allotment and so I have a couple of pics of my plot to help me recover from spending my work day trapped in a concrete air-conditioned, fluorescent-lit box of an office. Blah.Isn't it cute? You can see the recently-added fence, complete with gate. On the left we have beet(root)s, growing very well indeed, and to the right of them leeks doing moderately well. Towards the right there are cauliflower and broccoli plants, now sitting smug and safe away from nibbling rabbits. And on the far right 4 tomato plants. (Try not to notice my neighbour's plot which is over-stuffed like the amazon rainforest. I reckon they're sneaking in some miracle-gro in the dead of night.)
Below at the back you can see a row of teeny tiny 'perpetual spinach' shoots coming up - it's apparently a type of chard. I just throw in whatever free seeds I get. Under the piece of fence is some rocket lettuce of which I partook yesterday and it was bloody fantastic.These mustard greens in the front have gone mental from the little plants I found growing wild at A Rocha and transplanted. They grow faster than I need them so some leaves have been composted (don't worry, it's all the circle of life). They have a strong taste of mustard which I don't care for in massive quantities. It's surprising to me now how willing I am to just find out what something is by picking off a bit and eating it. At A Rocha if we're not sure if something is a weed or a plant, we'll just eat some. I haven't died yet.

Soundtrack

While 9/11 happened live on the tv, the news of Michael Jackson's death happened live on the internet. I feel sad for him, he really never had a chance to be normal and happy.
I was trying to figure out why it mattered to me, since he hadn't had a hit for ages and was seriously weird. A guy interviewed on the street in Harlem said Michael Jackson provided the soundtrack of his life and I think that's what it is. Lots of his songs are associated with particular moments in my life. On family holidays in the 80's my brother was into the Jackson 5 so we had the cassettes in the car and sang along while driving round the Isle of Wight. When the 'Thriller' video came out my mother forbid me from watching it so I sneaked out to my friend Nicola's house down the street and watched it there...and it really scared me. And so it goes on.

Upcycling again

I'm so into this. Making bags from fabric that has been otherwise engaged as a pillowcase or a tea towel. Here are some recent bags from Value Village pillowcases (99c each).
The pink one here had the pink panel as an edging, so I kept it. The second pillowcase in this pair came ready-lined, so both saved time and decision-making.
The canvas on this next one is actually new, as is the square print on the front, but the lining is an old t-shirt, so it counts.This one on the left is a former pillowcase, and the one on the right was an apron in its previous life.And finally, I LOVE this bag and expect more tea-towel based bags on this blog. (I can tell you're excited about that.) And what's more I found this method of making bags with linings and handles that saves an immense amount of time, and provides much cleaner (and fewer) lines at the end.

Rabbit-proof fence

Four days before I was due to put up a chicken wire fence with some friends, the rabbits found my veggie plot. Oh no! They went for the broccoli and cauliflower plants and didn't demolish them but did some serious damage. My plot is on the edge of the area which is good because I can grow tall things without fear of shading other people's veggies but does make it easy pickins for the rabbits (one side is fenced off because it's shared with plot neighbours who do have a fence). And so my friend Rosie helped me fix up a temporary fence to stop them completely finishing off the one plant that got most eaten and one next to it that is still looking pretty good.It's like a sort of wooden stonehenge effect. Rosie made a sign: 'No Rabbits, No!'

Giggling at midnight

I am currently reading Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, which I bought from the Oxfam bookshop in Canterbury for two pounds and fifty pee.
It's very very entertaining and I'm enjoying it a lot. It's clever and it's funny. It makes me laugh out loud. Since it's been blinking hot lately I (and it seems many of my neighbours) sleep with windows open. You can hear people snoring and..whatnot. It's like sharing a big wartime dormitory with 50 people. Anyway, since this book makes me laugh almost every evening when I sit in bed reading it, I try not to laugh out loud, mostly because several of my neighbours know that I am most often alone at midnight and they might think I was a bit strange.
This made me chuckle yesterday:
"Sometimes the fluffy bunny of incredulity zooms round the bend so rapidly that the greyhound of language is left, agog, in the starting cage. A feisty stagger was needed to reach the next train before it left - only to find it had been cancelled! But, 'luckily', the train before mine was so late that it still hadn't departed. All the seats were taken, and I had to squeeze into a three-inch slot. I lost my balance when the train pulled away, but a human crumple zone buffered my fall. We stayed like that, half fallen. The Diagonal People."
It's supposed to cool down from tomorrow (glory, hallelujah) so I can let the giggles run free.

If it's wrong then I don't want to be right

My brother introduced me to Summer Heights High. If you don't like it, blame him.

Green and pleasant

I've been away. In England. I was there three and a half weeks which turned out to be quite a long time. It was nice to see family and friends though, and now I'm glad to be back. Here's a list of just some of the things I enjoyed in England:
1. The green rolling hills of southern England, with proper big hedgerows and ancient trees. There is nowhere like it.
2. Drinking in 500-year old pubs. Living in BC has given me a new appreciation for old stuff.
3. Watching Britain's Got Talent, Britain's Got More Talent, The Apprentice, and the MPs' expenses scandal on the news, just like everyone else.
4. Watching the Eurovision song contest, or at least all the songs and half the voting. Despite eastern Europe's annual ploy to invent a new country and vote for each other, Norway won and we came 5th!
5. Spending time with my 6 year old niece (who read me a book even though last time I was there she hadn't learned to read yet), my 2 year old nephew (who was learning the meaning of 'sugar high') and my newest nephew (who at 5 months old did very little except be cute).
6. Leaving my nephews and niece with their parents and going home for a quiet cup of tea.
7. Getting this little chopping board from my brother for my birthday, who made it from oak left over from their new kitchen counter. He's a design and technology teacher so he engraved it with 'Pavey 09: board of chopping' which I thought was pretty clever.

Miss Susan Boyle

It won't let me embed this, but check out the latest youtube classic. This lady is brilliant.

Boys and girls

A friend led me to this post about a page in a 70's book with the over-excited title I'm Glad I'm a Boy! I'm Glad I'm a Girl': here were your options:I'm not sure if you can read the font. It's pretty scary stuff. And in another post they talk about two separate board games for boys and girls involving careers - note the subtle difference in game titles that a commenter spotted.Apparently, the girls' game was later updated so women could in fact be lawyers or doctors. Another commenter suggested it unlikely the updated boys' version where they could be ballet dancers or nurses.

Karma from the gods of beige food

So in an effort to be healthy I made a salad today and felt very righteous. I got nearly to the bottom of my salad and then looked down and saw this.
Imagine my dismay.
I fished out the slug and went to throw away the salad. Then I thought a) That slug has clearly been in my salad the whole time, b) I may well have already eaten some slug slime and evidently I didn't taste it, c) there are some choice pieces of avocado still in that salad that I would like to eat.
So I ate the rest of the avocado (not the bit the slug is on in this pic, I hasten to add) and the boiled egg, and a bit of mushroom. And then I threw it away.
Is that disgusting? Is it normal? I don't know. I have another half bowl of salad from the same batch, which is now in the fridge. I may have to inspect it with care before I partake.

The perfect blend of productivity and laziness

What a nice treat to see George Clooney on the small screen in ER yesterday. I used to be quite the devotee of ER in olden times. I don't watch it now, but I did yesterday, for George, and maybe I'll try and catch the last 3 episodes.
I've been mostly sick the past few weeks. I've discovered the joys of lying on the couch watching Family Court, Ellen and Style by Jury. I keep thinking I'm on the mend then I get poorly again, but I really do think I'm on the mend now.
Anyway, I thought I'd share some pics of things what I have made recently. I'm back on making bags since they bring in the cash. I also made a new blind for my laundry area. Here's my before/after shots. I washed the old one which shrank it, so thanks to a HUGE piece of linen I got from Value Village for a dollar fifty, I made a new one. It would be nicer if it was white instead of beige, but at least it's the right shape now.
So that's that. Then I made this green bag, the first one I've ever made with pleats. It turned out pretty good but was quite a bit of work (fabric from VV naturally). I also bought a bunch of retro pillow cases from VV for 99c each, and made these two easy tote bags out of just one, so I'm hopeful of making some money there when I whip up the rest. (They come with at least one ready-made seam and doubled fabric so they're super-quick to make.)
And finally, here's a pair of socks I finally finished. I feel good that I know how to make socks, although I don't feel like I need to make a new pair any time soon.
And now it's time for the Bold and the Beautiful/Cops lunchtime combo.