Three days lost a year...

I didn't quite believe it when I first did the sum - brushing your teeth for two minutes twice a day equates to about 2 hours a month or 24 hours a year. Thought of another way, that's three whole working days every single year.

I really can't quite get my head round this. I know that cleaning my teeth thoroughly is something very worthwhile and that it saves pain and bills in the long term, etc etc. But to spend three working days a year doing it????!!! Two minutes seems such a small amount on each occasion but does seems rather unproductive when multiplied up that far. Perhaps I should be listening to little doses of something instructive at the same time - brushing up on my Spanish while I brush?

I have been quite diligent about cleaning since getting a posh Oral B Triumph toothbrush last year. I initially scoffed at the fact it included a timer (or Smartguide to use their jargon) but have found that it does help spur you to the full two minutes by prompting you to to change quadrants every 30 seconds. And it does reward you with a smiley face after two minutes...



I've occasionally experimented with using it for longer - you sometimes then get one of several different winking expressions. Leaving it running on my desk for five minutes just now only resulted in one change so I'm no nearer to knowing how many expressions are in its repertoire.



Perhaps I'm out of favour because I haven't yet responded to its instruction to bin my existing brush?

Splodges - an enjoyable little interlude

I'm enjoying plodding on with time-consuming needlepoint projects including the Ehrman Spring cushion cover, but fancied getting sidetracked by something that would:
a) let me try out painting a bit of a design on some canvas;
b) allow for decision-making as I go along;
c) not take long to finish.

I duly splashed some splodges of Tesco's acryllic paint onto a piece of scrap canvas...



...and have been semi-following the splodges and semi-ignoring them, according to whim.



The inspiration is Kaffe Fassett's lovely millefiori-like Paperweight fabric in the colourway 'sludge' though it's by no means an attempt to replicate the fabric. The wool is Anchor Tapisserie, in the colours I had to hand that were closest to 'sludge' - some a good match, others less so. There are some shapes that are vaguely reminiscent of the ones in the fabric but I decided early on that any attempt at copying the design would be doomed to failure - and that it would in any case defeat the object of being able to invent as I went along.



I've no idea what I'll do with the resulting little piece - I imagine I'll back it with Paperweight and make it into a little bag - or perhaps leave it as a little picture. I didn't really think about that when choosing the size of scrap to work on!

Unfortunately, I've had to pause as I haven't enough of colour 8072 to finish the background. I thought I'd spotted some on Saturday in a big remaindered box of wool in the Singer sewing shop in Bury St Edmunds - but it turned out to be the next-darker shade 8074 so I'll have to wait a little longer. (Of course I couldn't resist buying a big bag of wool anyway!)

I'd really recommend this type of project. It's fun deciding what to do as you go along while having a bit of painted guidance - I can't imagine me ever wanting to do a precisely painted canvas. The acryllic was cheap to buy (about a fiver I think) and easy to apply. It is also easy to correct mistakes, either by sewing over a few stitches or by cutting stitches out if a bigger area is involved. For instance, I sometimes found that larger concentric circles looked a bit boring and so oversewed one of the rings with a few spots of another colour. I found that I got slightly better at making the shapes fairly circular as I went along.

My only slight misgiving is that it feels a bit of a cop-out doing something all in very basic tent stitch. I suppose I could have used something more textured for the background, but it was more relaxing to keep this in-front-of-the-telly-task as simple as possible.

Now back to cracking on with one of the neverending bigger projects...

My very favourite web shop

I'm always pleased when I can find an excuse to buy from Cult Pens. I've used dozens of online shops - hundreds if you count every ebay seller - but this is my favourite, even though I don't have reason to buy from it very often. When I do come up with something to order, I always spend ages pouring over the site to decide what else I can treat myself to.

They do one thing and they do it brilliantly. They sell every kind of pen, pencil or refill imaginable, ranging in price from a pound or two to hundreds. The descriptions are very thorough, so you know, for example, what brands of refills will work for a particular pen. They also manage to be very friendly, letting their own opinions come out. Comments like "Sorry - Red standard cartridges have been inexplicably discontinued by Parker" make you realise that the descriptions are compiled by people taking a real interest, rather than bored temps. As their about us page says, they love pens and pencils. I've had occasion to mail them a few times with queries about discontinued models, and they always respond speedily, helpfully and knowledgably.

They also have a very sensible and quite generous postage policy - you only have to spend £10 to get free delivery.

The highlight of today's parcel - ordered on Sunday evening, arrived Tuesday - was a bottle of Diamine ink in China Blue, one dozens of colours available at the very reasonable price of £5.95.

It comes in a very classy bottle, taking you back to a pre-biro and computer keyboard era. I bet my grandfather, who was an architect with the most beautiful handwriting I've ever seen, used ink from a bottle just like this.



I'd been wanting to try Diamine for ages and agonised about which to pick first. In trying to choose a colour, I came across this excellent review of the individual colours. I can feel another order coming on soon - perhaps I'll go for the tasty-sounding Damson or Pumpkin next. But there's a danger that I'll start collecting them - and there are 80 colours in the range, with new ones launched from time to time so I'd better resist the temptation...well, perhaps I could just get one or two...

Fungal foraging

We spent a very enjoyable morning yesterday on a fungal foray run by mycologist Jonathan Revett in Thetford Forest.



Together with our friends Ursula, Dave and Helen...



we found a lovely basketful....



...which Jonathan then checked so that we took home only edible ones (plus a rare earthstar for Helen to take to school).





This year seems to be particularly good - the group as a whole found more than 50 types of mushrooms and toadstools in a couple of hours ambling round the forest.



I loved the range of colours we found - purply and orange and red and yellows - and their wonderful names, such as hares' ears, wood blewits, shaggy parasols, wood woolly-foot, saffron milk cap and amethyst deceivers.













Of course there were also ones that were ugly (black saddle)



very dangerous (death cap)



and weird (stinkhorn)....



I learnt far lot more on this foray than on ones I've done in the past (though still won't be filling the frying pan without an expert to hand!). And I've finally realised that there's no need to try to identify lots of different types - all I have to do is to learn with confidence a few good ones (as well as any they could be confused with and of course in particular the very dangerous ones).

The wood blewit and amethyst deceiver were my favourite new discoveries of the day - not only did I like their colours and taste, but also appreciated the fact that they are easily recognisable!






We started our breakfast with some of yesterday's findings (sadly a few including a big cep had gone past their best and so had to be thrown out) sauted with garlic and parsley...



...then went a little walk to put our new powers of observation to the test - and were pleased to find that we are now able to spot and identify (at least approximately) many more than on a walk a week ago!

Astonishing hibiscus tree

I really loved this beautiful little flower-smothered hibiscus tree we came across in Spain.



The Technomage has quite a few shirts featuring hibiscus flowers



and when on holiday I'm always on the look-out for suitable bushes that he can be photographed blending in with (to the amusement of passers-by!). Our own bush at home this wet English summer only managed five flowers:



and most of the ones we saw in Spain had lovely flowers but not many of them.



Now that Nerja's street market has been moved to a ridiculously inaccessible place out of the town centre, we got our holiday market fix in nearby Torrox Costa, where we came across the astonishing little tree completely covered in huge flowers. (Sadly, he wasn't wearing one of his hibiscus shirts at the time)









It was just on a strip of grass lining the main road, not in someone's carefully tended garden.



I've no idea whether it is a special variety or just a freakishly wonderful plant but I just loved it and could have happily spent the afternoon sitting gazing at it (and probably would have if I'd had my bigger, better camera with me). Sadly, even if I could track one down it probably wouldn't thrive here!

Great format for printing digital photos

I've always loved taking photos but have been struggling since the onset of digital with which, if any, to print. I tend to get some printed whenever I need a selection to show people, eg at my school reunion last week, with the result that I have a random pile of prints while most photos only ever get viewed on screen. I would like to have a more coherent set of prints to leaf through, but don't want to get swamped.

I'm hoping that a type of print I discovered on Truprint yesterday may be the answer. They're called collage prints, and cost just 9p for a 6x4 one (19p and 99p for bigger sizes). You pick one to 20 of your photos, choose a background colour, specify the gap between pics and decide whether to add a title. It then arranges them



and you can either accept the design or make changes.



I'd love to get into the habit of doing one of these for each month/quarter/year/holiday or whatever. I've tried something similar before, but that involved using a macro in Photoshop and was a bit fiddly and I never got into a routine.

The collage prints aren't completely flexible - pics are rearranged simply by shuffling so it could be frustrating if a star shot resolutely remains small. But for 9p, I'm not going to complain!

My preferred normal photo printing service is the excellent Photobox but I just happened to be using Truprint yesterday as their calendars were half price - we thought that designing the calendars would take us only an hour or so but we ended up faffing round all day!

I won't be swapping to Truprint for normal prints though - theirs are 6"x4" not 6"x4.5" so some of the print gets cropped (and you can't choose where). So I won't be deserting Photobox.

Getting some sewing done

I've had a bad track record sewing in Spain - after all, the kit I started there in 1983 only got framed this year...

So this time I thought I'd tackle something easy and took an Ehrman kit that I'd picked up at a car boot the other week. It proved ideal - I normally prefer to do something where I can make decisions as I go along, but I am enjoying having a project where you simply sew where the appropriate colour has been painted on the canvas. It's a bit like painting by numbers! The only difficulty is that the painted canvas areas for two of the shades of green are very difficult to tell apart - to my surprise, I found it easier to see the difference in the early evenings, rather than bright sunshine. Since getting home, I've printed out the photo, which is proving a help too.

I did a little every day, while listening to a good book (I especially enjoyed the ubiquitous The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Lindsay Davis's Falco story, A Body in the Bath House) and watching the world go by.

I'm making steady progress - though it's probably hard to see what I've done from these shots, taken on 2 September before I started, and on the 14th.





In fact. I've liked having the painted pattern so much that I bought some acrylic paints from the supermarket yesterday and am going to try designing a canvas myself!

A virtually computerless holiday

I'd intended devoting some attention to this while on holiday in Nerja in Spain, but unlike previous years we couldn't pick up any free wifi on the apartment's balcony. So I'll have to catch up now.

There were plenty of internet cafes - and indeed bars - with cheap or free wifi, but I found that was always eager to switch the laptop off the moment I'd finished work-related tasks, checked my email and made the odd free voip call.

One location was a fairly serious cybercaff packed with computers - we're members there and it is very efficient, but we tended to favour a new and smaller place, run by a friendly Estonian family who have a sideline in selling beautiful Estonian wooden mats etc (several of which have accompanied us back as souvenirs or pressies).




There was also a very friendly cafe, Bagels & Tapas, where we did try working once but it was hard to concentrate while drinking cold beer and eating their excellent chips! Instead this became our preferred place for making phone calls via the laptop - free via VOIP Cheap - though of course you need to spend money in the cafe to access the free wifi to make the call!

In fact I really enjoyed being without constant web/email access - there was so much more time in the days! I'm aware how much time I've spent (wasted) in front of the computer since getting home, surfing, emailing, sorting photos etc. Time sort of zooms by, and sitting down at my desk for a minute turns into an hour. So I'm determined to learn the lesson from Spain - being in front of the computer is fine when I'm working, but I'm going to start setting a kitchen countdown timer to 20 minutes when it's for something more aimless!

Harder than building real bridges?

As I'm interested in both games and civil engineering, I couldn't resist buying a game called Viaduct at a recent car boot.

It looked quite easy - you throw a dice and then place or remove pieces accordingly, to create a continuous viaduct running across the board.



Having tried it for the first time yesterday we found that it's surprisingly difficult to achieve the aim. The pieces always seem to be precisely the wrong length to fill the required gap and you have to be pretty efficient in your route, or you run out of pieces. I can see why people on the excellent Board Game Geek site didn't think it was a great game and only gave it an average of 5/10 but I must admit that I did enjoy playing it anyway, even if our resulting viaducts lacked a certain elegance...

Enjoying the fruits of various people's labours including our own

We've had some good days out recently, including two relatively local trips last week to meet up with various friends holidaying in the area.

One day involved a trip to Ely to meet a friend who was house-hunting in Cambridge. We visited the cathedral and then some antique shops as well as a pub and an award-winning tea shop. To my surprise I found a box of new miniature knitted clothes for dolls and bears tucked away in one of the antiques shops and so bought a dress as well as two jumpers as I was fairly confident that these were the right sizes. However do people manage to knit things this small? They turned out to be a perfect fit for two of my bears and the red jumper and hat are ready to be given to one of my god-daughter Poppy's bears.



Poppy also loves little bears and recently gave me Georgia and Gerald to join my clan. They are pictured with one of the chairs that Poppy made a while ago so that my bears would be comfy. They also brought some tasty bear-sized food with them in the form of teensy jars filled with amazingly detailed corn, grapes and pretzels - again, I can't imagine how people can make such intricate things.



The other day out was with friends who were holidaying in Holt. We went to Felbrigg Hall's Chilli Fiesta - the Technomage being addicted to Mexican food. It was surprisingly busy, despite mostly horrible weather (thank goodness for the large copper beech tree that afforded shelter for our picnic) and there was a good range of spicy produce. We don't often buy things like this when we see them in delis as we can make many of them ourselves more cheaply, but it's nice to support local producers, especially when you can buy direct.



I chose Jules & Sharpie's lime & green pepper jelly - as that was a combination we'd never come across - and he picked Cambridge Chilli Farm's Nagalade (ie a marmalade made with very hot naga chillies) as it's a variety we're less likely to grow ourselves. We rounded our purchases off with some Lymn Bank Farm cheddar in extra strong, onion and black pepper varieties. We've bought from them before and very good it is too. To wash it down, we got lashings of Breckland Orchard's ginger beer with chilli and the final purchase was a dozen Fresno chillies as our chilli crop is a bit feeble this year.

We attempted deep frying eight of the Fresnos - coated in batter and stuffed with cheese - but the batter wouldn't stick so it was a bit of a fiasco. Must do some reading to work out what we did wrong. The remaining four joined some freshly harvested tomatoes and oregano from our garden as well as some shop-bought onions and garlic in a rather nice spicy salsa last night.






We also sampled our first home-grown potatoes, some Pink Fir Apples, which the Technomage described as "some of the best new potatoes I've ever had". They really were excellent - tasty, firm and delightfully knobbly.



However, I think I harvested them a bit too early so perhaps didn't get the maximum crop. I hadn't realised they were maincrops and not due to mature quite yet. Luckily, several more plants are still growing in other pop-up bins so there are more to come as well as some Charlottes. And we've still got the teensy ones left to eat from this batch.

Back to sewing

I've been neglecting sewing of late but am feeling re-inspired after my purchases at a car boot sale in Kennet on Sunday.

The latest project of many projects that I'm neglecting involves 25 squares, the idea being that 13 will have a flower and 12 have a plain colour in a textured stitch. But this is requiring quite a bit of concentration in copying designs to graph/squared paper in addition to the effort in keeping count while I sew.

So I couldn't resist buying an unused preprinted Ehrman kit called Spring when I saw it at the car boot and got it for £4.50. It'll be ideal for when I don't feel like concentrating and should also be good practice for seeing how to do the shading of flower petals properly.



My other sewing-related purchase was a bag of 17 skeins of Anchor Tapisserie wool for just 30p including several in colours I hadn't got and seven in shades of grey for a project I've got in mind to start and then neglect at some time in the dim and distant future.

My most nostaligic purchase at the car book wasn't sewing related - it was three empty third-of-a-pint milk bottles for £1, bringing back memories of infant school break times. I remember that I used to hate it if I ended up with a warm one that had been standing by the radiator!



Kennet is a really excellent car boot, if a little difficult to find as:
a) we muddle Kennet and nearby Kentford and generally head for the wrong one
b) the signposting is confusing so we take a convoluted route
c) it's only once a fortnight therefore we generally try to go on the wrong Sunday.
It's a year or so since we'd been there and was just as good as we remembered - last year's star bargain was a new DAB radio for £3. I also came back this week with half a dozen lovely strong perennials, all favourites of mine, as well as some bamboo to help keep my tomatoes upright and a couple of stocking fillers for my Mum's birthday so it was a good haul.

Disposing of the final things from the back of the pantry

The Mouse Incident led to us unearthing all sorts of jars and packets lurking at the back of the pantry - mostly unappealing soups and sauces, odd ounces left in the bottom of bags of pasta and a surprising number of packets of brown rice. (I periodically fancy brown rice salad, hoping to recreate one I used to buy from a health food shop. I never get round to making it, continue eating Basmati or easy cook white for normal purposes, forget I've got the brown and buy some more next time the fancy takes me.)

A crate of things has been sitting on the worksurface for weeks (months in fact) pending use or binning and yesterday we finally got round to throwing out the things we no longer fancy, such as a jar of African black-eyed bean relish seven years out of date, an equally old and rather odd sauce for couscous and couple of undated jars of other people's chutney in jars that hadn't been filled quite full enough. The revolting corroded state of the lid of one of them confirmed the wisdom of our decision that the bin was a better destination than our stomachs.



But the very old things did yield some pleasant surprises, in particular something called Symington's Table Cream.



It sounds like something from a bygone era - and indeed I came across this 1950s ad online - but it was a mere three years and two months out of date, so it's certainly from this millennium...



It turned out to be rather nice. But I better not buy any more (assuming it's still made) or it'll probably sit in the pantry for another five years...