Warm toes... and a warm feeling of accomplishment

I'm feeling good today because I'm sitting here wearing my first ever pair of hand-knitted socks, which I finished last night.

I love them! And I've already started on a second pair, this time a pink stripy 6-ply pair as requested by DD to wear under her riding boots. Going to try short-row heels this time.

Yarn is Regia Mini-Ringels in Blue Sea, and the pattern is the free one supplied with the yarn.

A mug of tea

Over the last few years (and with a little help from DH) the children have bought me several beautiful pottery mugs as birthday presents. DH and I have both developed a habit of having our first cup of tea of the day in one of these mugs.

But DH's latest mug has a creeping crack, and won't last much longer. So DS and I went to town today and chose him a new mug, a fine and beautiful mug to hold his morning tea and bring a bit of pleasure to the start of his day. An Easter gift from his family - and far more lasting than a chocolate Easter egg or rabbit.

Rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb

DD has conceived a passion for rhubarb. She craves rhubarb. So I grabbed the last few sticks of rhubarb from the supermarket and made rhubarb and orange crumble for tea last night, served with vanilla ice cream. Utter bliss.

I saw a list this week of the 20 most disliked British foods, and rhubarb made it onto the list (along with black pudding, Marmite, jellied eels, tripe, faggots, and Haggis). All I can say is, the people who voted for rhubarb must not have had it cooked properly for them. (Although I must admit I like my rhubarb sweet - I'm not so keen on the Dutch 'rhubarb as a vegetable with oily fish' thing.)

Now that the greenhouse is finally up, we've got a corner of the vegetable patch earmarked for growing our own rhubarb. We're keeping our fingers crossed for a fine crop :-)

Easter preparations

The kids (DD in particular, who is a chocaholic) have been nagging me to buy them Easter eggs. I argue that too much chocolate isn't good for them, and anyway, as we're not Christians then we shouldn't really be celebrating Easter.

Of course, I love chocolate too, and even though Easter isn't in our religious calender, as a rite of Spring it has resonance for me. So my compromise is an Easter egg hunt, with a few (well, OK, lots) of small eggs instead of one humongous one each. I enjoy hiding them, the kids enjoy looking for them, and I enjoy watching the kids look for them.

One year my stepfather hid them and forgot where. The hunt lasted until nearly lunchtime! And last year my mother-in-law finally found the last egg tucked away in a pot on her mantelpiece a fortnight after Easter. Every year I resolve to count them before hiding them, but somehow I never get round to it...

Sea longing

Because today, landlocked, I needed the sea.

Starting out... take two

After an utterly demoralising false start (these were originally intended as an onboard project during the Eclipse trip, but I managed to pull all the stitches irretrievably off one needle just as I was about to switch from rib to stocking stitch on the first sock, and put the whole thing away in disgust) I'm finally making progress with my first pair of socks.

I love the way the self-striping is coming out. And I love knitting with the finer wool for a change (I picked up DH's cable sweater to knit a row or two last night and the double knitting and 4 mm needles felt so thick and unwieldy).

I'm looking forward to turning the first heel - I understand the pattern instructions, but can't quite see in my head what will really happen as I knit

Wool is Regia Mini Ringels, shade Blue Sea.

A total eclipse of the Sun

Sometimes in life you have to just grab an opportunity as it comes to you, or regret it forever.

Four weeks ago an old friend rang out of the blue. "We've just realised that there's a total eclipse of the Sun over the Med on March 29th. How do you fancy chartering a yacht and sailing to see it?"

So dawn on the 29th of March saw us sailing into the harbour of the tiny island of Kastellorizo, a Greek anomaly off the coast of Turkey and the only place in Europe to experience totality.



After a leisurely breakfast of freshly-baked chocolate bread from the local bakery (very welcome after our night crossing from Rhodes) we climbed the staircase up the cliffs behind the town and staked out our viewing spot on one of the hilltops. The skies were clear, the sun hot, and it looked like we were going to be lucky and get good views.

First contact was about one and a half hours before totality. First a tiny nibble out of the sun, then a bite, then the sun a reverse new-moon shape as the moon slowly moved in front of it. The temperature started to drop long before you could see any difference in the brightness of the sunlight - people started putting on sweaters and jackets, and wishing that they'd not worn shorts after all.

A few minutes before totality the light finally started to dim slightly. It took on a weird yellowish cast, the strangeness compounded by the oddity of shadows - usually when the light is dim like that, the shadows are the long ones of morning or evening. Here the shadows were midday-short, a wrongness that your subconscious noted before your conscious mind figured out what was strange.

At totality the sun turned black, with the flare of the corona like a halo around it. It didn't get completely dark (although it did get dark enough for the lights of the town on the Turkish mainland to come on). Planets shone in the sky, and all around the horizon the sky was orange and pink and mauve, like a 360-degree sunset. One of the most beautiful things I've ever seen in my life.

After 3 minutes of totality the moon moved off the sun. At the first sliver of sunlight the light came up like someone turning up a dimmer switch. Everyone around us was high as a kite, chattering and laughing and sharing their feelings about the experience.

In the words of the Californian next to us: "Just awesome!"