My children think they are neglected, my husband thinks he's ignored, no wonder I haven't posted.
But I have crafted, a bit.
A few rows of Loden to rest my brain between complex spreadsheet tasks. A little bit of embroidery when dealing with emails gets too much. A section of Moss on the Summit in the evenings, when my brain has had enough of writing.
The wool I blogged earlier this month was bought while on holiday in Scotland. And then I bought some more, also 'local', also undyed.
On the first full day of our stay in Scotland, we went to Lindisfarne, and on the last full day we went to Iona. We didn't go to the abbey in either place (to be saved for another trip): and although the two islands are on the opposite coasts of the UK, the monastery at Lindisfarne was founded by St. Aidan from Iona.
Lindisfarne is cut off by the tide for a few hours at the time, and we thought we'd have time to walk round the entire island. We didn't: the walking guide said allow three hours for a three mile walk and this was surprisingly accurate, but it didn't tell us about the nasty spiky seed heads that caught onto trousers (jeans were OK) and spiked through onto the unhappy teenager. I made my first crafty purchase, a small cross stitch kit of a celtic cross. It came from a shop called Celtic Crafts, which was mainly a gift shop with a few small cross-stitch kits. It was small, but also covered with backstitch. I completed it during the holiday, and took photos at the nunnery on Iona.
We weren't staying at Lindesfarne, but in Coldstream, within a mile of the border with England. However, we went from there to Edinburgh a couple of times, and saw several shows at the Fringe. I went to K1 Yarns, a nice little yarn shop, but nothing tempted me there. Another shop which might interest craft-bloggers was the Grassmarket Embroidery Shop, a few minutes walk from K1, at the far end of the Grassmarket. It had a somewhat intimidating display of work in the window, and when I went in, there were racks of embroidery threads and other materials. The shop keeper was friendly and in the back room were some kits. However if you wanted to design your own work, this was the place to go.
Halfway through our trip, we drove to Loch Awe. We actually went through Stirling on the Saturday of UK Knit Camp and Ravelry Weekend 2010, but we didn't stop. We had a long drive to the banks of Loch Awe and the remote holiday cottage we were staying in.
We did various touristy things: a day in Oban, where I bought my First Yarn in Ages. It came from a croft (I think) a little way north of Oban.
On the last day we had a coach trip to Iona. We went from Oban by ferry, then a coach took us across the Isle of Mull, before another ferry took us the short distance to Iona. We walked to the end of the Island, and stared at the Atlantic. 
Then back to the village, where I photographed my completed cross-stitch in the nunnery. We looked in the little gift shops, and I was unable to resist it: more new wool, a beautiful, soft, snowy-white ball of shetland, spun on Mull - we had passed the mill on the coach.
Having missed the Ravelry day in Stirling, I also missed the Festival of Quilts - even though we drove through Birmingham on the appropriate day.
The last time I bought yarn of any sort was January 2nd 2009.
It wasn't even for me: a ball of blue yarn in the sale, to make a phone case for my daughter, and a ball of red Debbie Bliss something-expensive to make an iPod case for the same daughter.
Then in an effort to use up some of my stash, I stopped buying yarn. (Only yarn, not material, not embroidery stuff, not patterns.) It was a challange to myself to avoid buying yarn for a year.
It was hard to begin with, the aching desire to buy something, anything just to own something new. (A whole year - how could I do it?) But I struggled through.
By the time, a year had passed, I'd got used to not buying any yarn. It annoyed me as well, that I'd bought wool at the start of January, so my year of not buying was oddly offset. I continued to not-buy-yarn until it became so long since I had bought something that the next thing I bought would be The First Yarn in Ages. It would have to be something worthy, something special, and nothing was quite that good enough, until today.
A single skein of Hebridean aran-weight undyed wool, slightly scratchy, but it will be warm, and comforting, and will be an accent in something, as yet unthought of. A souvenir, a special skein. Newly bought wool.
Progress made on Pax Vobiscum and Concentric Oblongs.
Summit had a bit of a hitch. I got to the end of the first ball and discovered that my other ball wasn't the same. Where the first had all been fairly muted changes, the second had darker darks and lighter lights. After some thought, I realised there was nothing much I could do about, and got knitting.
Unfortunately, a dark stripe appeared at the boundary between the two balls: the repeat in the yarn colours was just the same frequency as each little segment. I carried on for a while, but this bugged me more and more, until I could stand it no more and ripped back to where the new ball started. So now I am doing something complex, involving restarting the knitting using yarn from partway into the ball, and knitting towards the end, and then hopefully being able to continue at the partway point. It's too complicated to explain in words, but I'm just hoping it works, or it will be frogpool time again.
Your wishes on my last post seems to have done it. I'm back crafting. Not a lot, enough to get over the "done nothing" hump.
I've done a bit of knitting on Summit, but not quite enough to finish the first ball.
I've done a bit of needlework on Pax Vobiscum, but lets face it, this one will take a very long time.
I've even done a bit of the handquilting on my leaf quilt.
School holidays in three days.
July stitches knitted: 0
July stitches sewed: 22
So far a fairly pathetic month in the craft front. No especial reason, except I've got out of the habit.
I'm about to go onto my second ball of yarn on the Summit shawl, and the variation is much greater then on the first ball. What do I do? Do I take lots of photographs and blog it in excrutiating detail, or do I just get on and knit?
Summit: nearly halfway, but the next ball of yarn has much more contrast between the different colours in it.
Concentric Oblongs: some, but not very much at all.
Words: many words carefully crafted together to form ideas that sound smooth and comfortable, but definitely do not stab like a stiletto into the heart of the enemy.
At a family restaurent on Milton Keynes a while ago, I had a delicious dessert of what might best be called "fried fruit".
Yesterday, looking at the rather ripe peaches we had, I wondered about re-creating it. "There must be a recipe on google" I thought, but google didn't really seem to help. The nearest was a recipe on a site which included "gingered chicken", but that recipe had no ginger in the list of ingredients, or in the cooking instructions. Maybe they meant "gingered chickened surprise" where the surprise was that there was no ginger.
However, as it was the best I could find, I had to use it.
1) Cut fresh peaches into slices.
2) Melt some butter in a frying pan. (I used about an ounce, which was too much).
3) Add peach slices.
4) After a minute, sprinkle with soft brown sugar. Then sprinkle on some more (or not).
5) When you think it must be done by now, serve with creme fraiche.
And that was it, and it was very, very nice.
Left in the pan is a delicious looking combination of brown sugar, butter and peach juice: it looks like the butterscotch sauce my aunt used to make for ice cream.
In May, I sewed on Pax Vobiscum, and I knitted on Summit. I didn't finish either - I'm not even halfway on either. On Pax Vobiscum, I'm still on the P.
And that is about it on the crafty front.
The Whig interpretation of history is that events unfold from an uncivilised past to the glorious present, in a smooth and fairly steady form of progress. This is especially true of the history of science, in which there are clear heroes and villans.
As we know, things are not quite so smooth: sometimes progress is lumpy and full of dead-ends, sometimes things even regress. The hero can be wrong. The theory can be discredited.
It was interesting to watch political history unfold this week. We had a crisis in Britain, the kind which will be written about in the history books. In a hundred years time, this last week will be an event to be written about in student essays, discussed in history programs and the subject of many a university thesis. If the coalition works, this week might be presented in a Whiggish manner, as the obvious stage in the evolution of British Parliamentary democracy.
I really hope it works.
In that light I offer a glimpse of the back of my Pax Vobiscum - pax vobiscum means "peace with you". 
It shows the "a" and part of the "P".
FWIW, I did feel a bit sorry for Dr Brown, who, long before he became Prime Minister, was a lecturer in history. If his party had mananged a few more seats, then "Brown and Clegg" might have been the heroes of future history lessons. But I'm a lot more hopeful for the future with "Cameron and Clegg".
