Chatiryworld

Postcard

Too busy enjoying summer to blog.  Back soon.

Moved

We made it, yet still have no broadband so you'll have to wait a few more days for photos of the sunset over Edinburgh last night.  Watching Monday's storms from the comfort of our sofa was particularly good too (and then being very grateful we had taken the day off as the trains from Edinburgh were cancelled as a result of said storms).  We love our new house.

In the meantime I'm touring Fife's libraries (today, Burntisland) to attempt to keep up with email, blogs and all that kind of thing.

Happy new year!

Hope 2011 turns out to be an amazing year for you all.  We're hoping to move house over the Forth and I personally am aiming to use my time more efficiently.  I often find myself getting annoyed because I've not done something (usually something nice, like read a certain book or something) because I have been faffing about online or just faffing about generally or even worrying about all the time that I have been faffing about.  I've downloaded swissmiss's Teux Deux (because if you're going to use a productivity app you may as well use a beautiful one) to help me with this. 

I've already been going through my sewing books and marking down things I want to make, that's another aim for this year, to make more from all the sewing books sitting on my shelves.  I'm choosing one project from each book as a starting point.  I also plan to knit more for me this year.

Who knows what else 2011 will bring...

The year in Chatiryworld

1. Salts Mill, 2. Jon's birthday cake, 3. Kiki and her big sisters, 4. Jon on North Berwick Law., 5. Broadford, 6. Harbour office, 7. Us in Brussels, 8. Knitted poem, 9. Computer at Bletchley Park, 10. Pittenweem, 11. Forth Bridge, 12. White!

January - I baked speculoos, made Jon a hat and rediscovered a childhood favourite.

February - we visited my mum, became the proud owners of a KitchenAid mixer and celebrated Nagglemas.

March - we learned about a Moomin exhibition in Brussels but decided we couldn't go to it and I wondered about the charmed lives of lifestyle bloggers.

April - we climbed North Berwick Law for the first time.

May - a return visit to Seven Stories in Newcastle, some nice weekends and our first wedding anniversary.

June - writing up about our May adventures in the Highlands and our new favourite pub that we discovered, and why Facebook is great.

July - 5 years together and we decide to go to Brussels after all.

August - I go to Knit Camp, write up our Belgian trip and we head north to nose at houses in Inverness.

September - two weddings and a blocked drain all in one weekend.

October - describing celebrating my grandparents back in September, discovering Charles Rennie Mackintosh's only English house (also in September) and loads of new breakfast ideas.

November - autumn light, celebrating Chazmas and a festive gift guide.

December - it snows, really snows and some festive images.

Have a lovely new year!

And so this is winter

It started snowing on Friday night as we were walking home from a lovely Thanksgiving dinner.  On Saturday this was the scene in the local park.

By Sunday it was looking like this, the local kids were out making loads of snowmen.

I took the opportunity to be the first to trudge through some of the snow, love doing that!

This morning the park was pretty much all white.  I didn't really notice that until I uploaded the photos from my camera, if I hadn't been so cold and on my way to work I might have tried to get some more shots. 

The cold weather looks set to continue, apparently the temperature on Friday will reach a high of -3C. 

Scotland's Housing Expo

On Saturday we went up to Inverness for the day to go to Scotland's Housing Expo.  I'm not sure when we got interested in new housing design, we've been fans of Dualchas and their kit home company Hebridean Homes for years.   They design homes to fit in with the Highland landscapes but aren't afraid of being modern, far better (in my opinion) than the identical concrete kit houses and mock crofts you see everywhere.

So, the Expo.  It was a fantastic opportunity to see work from a variety of different architectural practices and developers.  And, let's be honest, play house.  Every one we went into I was working out where I'd place the sewing machine and where we could keep our books.  Every house made use of natural light, passive house principles at work.  Our basement flat does get good light for what it is, but nothing on this.  We're also becoming increasingly frustrated by the internal kitchen - no natural light and all ventilation via a fan.  The kitchens at the Expo were all beautifully sunny, with large windows, and, in many cases, glass doors opening out onto the garden.  Jon's been making chutney recently and being able to open doors to air the kitchen out would be wonderful.  Many of the houses had living areas where you could have the kitchen open to the living room, or shut it off using one or two doors (in some cases sliding).  It keeps cooking more social and means you're not locked away, but if you are making chutney you can keep the smells trapped in, or if you can't be arsed to do the washing up it doesn't sit there staring at you like it did when we had our open plan place in Dean Village.

I could have happily lived in most of these houses, some were a bit on the small side and designed as starter homes (which, considering we don't own our own home is probably aimed at us), others were lovely big 4 bedroom detached numbers that realistically we probably couldn't afford unless something really really awful happens to the housing market.  There were lots of 3 bedroom terraces and semis though that, well, seemed right for us.  House HS by Malcolm Fraser Architects, for example, seen above.  Three bedrooms, plenty of storage space (we are collectors of Stuff) and a living space where you can go open plan, or shut the kitchen off when making chutney.

Although the houses are currently part of the exhibition, when it's all done in September they will either be up for sale or rent.  They'll make for a funny little community (plus it's right on the southern outskirts with no sign of a corner shop) but it's been planned well, with communal gathering areas and a great playpark.  We wondered if we'd feel frustrated that we wouldn't be able to try and get one (Inverness is fine for a daytrip but not commutable to Edinburgh) but there were so many people who obviously were after one I think it would have been quite stressful worrying about the competition.  We were just able to enjoy ourselves and nose around the houses.  Many of them had displays on various aspects of energy efficiency, and the housing association ones had loads of great craft and cooking books from Highland Libraries (seriously impressive stock guys!).

 

Downsides?  Well, some of the decor wasn't to our taste but it does help give a sense of scale and an idea of what fits in that you didn't get in the empty houses.  Oh, and other people.  It got very busy as we were there on a Saturday afternoon.  We learned that some people really have no imagination.  Lots of the houses had little alcoves or mezzanine levels that really confused other people.  Whilst I saw an alcove as a sewing space others were muttering 'What's the point of that?' 'What would you put there?' and best of all, 'I don't understand!'.  You can use the space for whatever you like, make a reading area, put the thing you've always wanted space for in it, leave it empty, have some fun thinking of what to do with it.  I used to think the property programmes where they tell you to paint everything white and put your stuff in storage were really underestimating people's ability to see beyond someone's else's decor/design and imagine what they could do with it.  Apparently not.

Method laundry

I'm a member of People Against Dirty, set up by Method to promote their products.  I like Method products, so I joined.  My blog doesn't get that many readers so I don't get asked to review things and don't have a review policy or anything.  Apart from it must be something I'd like to use or try anyway.

Which is why I volunteered to test out the new Method laundry cleaner and blog about it.  I'm not a particularly great reviewer as I usually run out of patience with trying to wax lyrical about something.  Bad reviews are a lot easier but I'm trying to give them up.  Anyway, here are my thoughts about Method laundry:

• Great packaging and the pump dispenser is really handy to use.  The liquid is super-concentrated so it looks like you don't have enough.  But you do.
• It has a strong fragrance - fresh air (other fragrances peony blossom and free + clear are available).  It's so strong that it actually covers up the real smell of fresh air that you get from drying your stuff outside.  I love that smell so the strong fragrance puts me off.  I use Ecover normally which doesn't have a strong fragrance.  I know a lot of people do like it strong though so Method's for you if you do.  I may end up saving the rest of the bottle to use in the winter when I can't dry stuff outside and won't mind about not being able to smell the real outside.
• It gets things clean.  This is a bit hard for me to test as we don't really dirty our clothes much - except when I drop tomato sauce down my top.  I haven't done this for a couple of weeks so haven't been able to see how Method fares in this.  But everything I have washed has come out lovely and clean.
• Eco-credentials.  As stated above, I use Ecover but I do hear it's a bit greenwash.  On the other hand, at least they're trying.  When I first saw Method laundry, alarm bells rang as there's a great big warning sign that I associate with dangerous chemicals telling me not to get it in my eyes.   I had a cursory search online to see if there was anything about greenwashing and didn't find anything too incriminating.  Inhabitat did a write-up of Method products last year and seemed pretty impressed.  So it seems to be good on that score.

So, yes, pretty good.  I can't really get that excited about it but I am a fan of Method and it's good to see more products coming to the UK.

Weekends are for...

Admiring the cherry blossom in the local park. Much of it is on the ground now.

Hanging out with friends and penguins at Edinburgh Zoo.  We liked the monkeys too.

Helping out at the Made in the Shade Springtime Jamboree.  I had such a lot of fun, I was on the door for the first hour and it was so lovely to see so many happy crafty people!  I know that sounds silly but my day job involves sitting at a computer doing informationy type stuff so it was nice to do something totally different.  And hello to my blog reader, I'm sorry, I was very rude and didn't ask your name or if you had a blog.  I guess I'm not used to many readers saying hello.

Eating delicious cupcakes (well, one) from Auntie M's, who provided the tea and cakes at the jamboree.  By far the best cupcake I've had, I've noticed a tendency for them to be dry, this was lovely and moist and the icing tasted of real fruit.  I definitely need to get over to De Courcy's Arcade in Glasgow to see the Made in the Shade shop and eat more cake.

Linkages

Excellent advert involving knitting.

Save 6 Music.  I may write more on this soon.

Caring for your introvert.  Via Karie at fourth edition.  There are several points in my life when I could have done with that as a handout for other people.

Happy new year!

I achieved all my aims for 2009: had a wonderful wedding and honeymoon without turning into a bridezilla, and got a new job.  This year's aims:

1) Visiting our friends in Brussels, probably later in the year when they've had a chance to get used to being parents.

2) Having another holiday in Orkney and getting Jon's wedding ring resized.

3) Improving our French to help with said trip to Brussels.

4) Making more preserves, especially elderflower cordial and tomato passata.

What about you?

The year in Chatiryworld

1. Wedding invites, 2. The Magimix arrives, 3. Gullane Beach, 4. Hen tea party, 5. Mr and Mrs Nagl, 6. Fowey, 7. Racing, 8. Living the dream, 9. Kneading dough, 10. Lunch at The Kitchin, 11. More food, 12. Union Canal at Harrison Park

Choosing 12 photos for the year seemed harder than usual, but here they are.  It was a year of food, the seaside, oh, and getting married.  2008 wasn't always so great, but 2009 was rather fine.

January - I celebrate 5 years of blogging and muse on the domestic life.

February - The Magimix comes into our lives, and I use it to make Jon's birthday cake.

March - Our love of East Lothian begins, a weekend in Yorkshire, and Emily explains quantitative easing to Jon.

April - Wedding preparations, we finally get round to visiting North Berwick and a hen tea party.

May - We got married!  So did Croila!

June - Started off fantastically as we were still on honeymoon in Cornwall.  We came back to reality and I blogged about the wedding.

July - I started a new job and we didn't move house.  We enjoyed summertime instead.

August - I blogged about our honeymoon and we lived the seaside dream for an afternoon.

September - We love tomatoes and I have an accident.  We also enjoy cupcakes.

October - Using our wedding bowl and dining at The Kitchin.

November - I had a think about comics and celebrated my birthday.  With lots of food.

December - Upside down houses and flying through space, snow and christmas.

Phew!  2010 may be a bit calmer. 

Help Bletchley Park

Jon's friend Steve Miller is running the Northampton 10k to raise money for the National Museum of Computing.  It's based at Bletchley Park (I am determined to go there one day), which, despite being a site of national historical importance, does not receive any government funding (neither does the museum).  This is a cause close to my heart as my granny was at Bletchley during the war (she was a crossword fiend), and in a strange coincidence, I temped for the trust's solicitors when I was at university and did a load of audio typing for all their property stuff.  That's a technical term, you know.

Roll up, roll up for the Great Nagl Declutter

We're not moving house but we're still decluttering, and boy do we have some clutter.  I've got a skein of Orkney Angora for sale on Ravelry, and then these choice items on eBay:

The DIY Bride book
The DIY wedding book
Cotton Friend Japanese craft magazine from winter 07/08
Selvedge magazine issue 14
Wedding Day ornament
Craft magazine - 1, 2, 3 and 4

I'm surprised there isn't any interest in Cotton Friend, Japanese craft magazines cost a fair wack here so you could get yourself a real bargain if there continues to be no interest!

Notes

• The films Sleep Furiously and Sunshine Cleaning are worth seeing.
• Typepad has a thing where I can reply to comments by email and they also show up on the blog.  Doesn't appear to be working at the moment.
• Did anyone put my name down as referring them to lovely Liz Earle products?  I got some freebies a few weeks ago as a thank you for referring a friend but I have no recollection of doing this!
• Present and Correct have some interesting goodies in their shop.
• I have a new job.  I've known about it unofficially since April but only got proper confirmation and a start date right before the wedding.  It's still in library world and will mean there will be less ranting about serious stuff and possibly more ranting about buses.  I've been walking to work for the last 4 years but now I have to brave regular public transport in the rush hour again.

Inside and out

Croila, D and E came round for dinner on Saturday.  We had been due to go out to the Pentlands together but the weather wasn't brilliant, so we had a bit of a Nintendo night.  And lots of chat and putting the world to rights.  The first thing D spied was Jon's Nintendo DS and within minutes had Jon synching them together so they could place Mario Kart together.  Then we moved on to Mario Kart on the Wii and finally, after dinner, Guitar Hero. 

Jon made a delicious meal, as ever.  Bit of a Mexican theme with burritos and goodies from Lupe Pintos, including the wonderful tomato and nigella chutney from Mr Vikki.

Sunday was a better day and we went over to Lower Largo to see my dad, M and about 47 children and teenagers.  Slight exaggeration.  We had a good walk on the beach and saw my brothers. We ate well again, lots of homemade waffles.