Making it all better

Excuse the language but it has been a hell of a week. Entirely my own fault but I managed to book myself onto a two day course during a week in which I was more than ordinarily busy with my day job. So I have been making it all better by ...

• painting my nails to match my current knitting project (yes, they're now bright red to match Megan's Redgum sock yarn)
  
• knitting said project
  
• buying a scoop of G&D's vanilla icecream with chocolate sauce on the way home
  
• putting a good squirt of Bulgari on each wrist
  
• phoning a friend for a chat
  
• making and eating a mushroom risotto with blue cheese (everything tastes better if you put Stilton on it)
  
• drinking a couple of glasses of Sauvignon Blanc
  
• making Nigella Lawson's banana bread from Domestic Goddess (minus the rum, raisins, and walnuts) for tomorrow's guild meeting
  
• watching four episodes of the West Wing season 4 back to back on the laptop whilst making risotto and banana bread - the Nick and Dave show is pretty entertaining but it doesn't come close to Bartlett for America - we bought our breadbox because it could hold a loaf from our breadmaker but it's also the only spare flat surface in the kitchen on which to rest the laptop
  
  Safe to say I'm feeling pretty good right now.

Random Wednesday

I saw this guy as I was heading out this morning. I didn't want to disturb him by putting a penny in for scale but he must have been at least 2.5" across. At first glance I thought he was a small bat! I love the dead leaf camouflage.

Hanging around to photograph the moth meant that I was walking up the hill as the same time as one of my neighbours. I hadn't really noticed that she kept looking nervously over her shoulder until she apologized for it, explaining that she wasn't paranoid, it's just that her cat has a habit of stalking her to the shop where she works unless she manages to give him the slip leaving the house. The hilarious thing is he doesn't actually follow her from the house but takes the shortcut up the gully then waits by the side of the road which he knows she has to come up. Smart cat.



This was one of the things I could see during my lunch break. I'd show you my other view but it's really difficult to take a picture of the inside of your eyelids. Yay for the siesta!

I perked up as soon as I got to the pub after work and was nicely settled with a half pint of Brakspear and a giants ploughman's platter. Felix and I amused everyone by secreting bits of our ploughman's into the tupperware* we had with us - that's tomorrow's lunch sorted.

Felix finished her day-glo Hopscotch socks.



She even modelled them despite the heatwave.



Come on, feet off the table now Felix.

After the pub Felix, Ellen, Abby and I headed to the Oxford institution that is G&Ds to initiate Felix into the ways of the G&Ds ice cream.



We got out just before a huge bunch of summer school students arrived and started queueing out onto the street and took our ice creams over the road to St Giles.



More knitting.

* not the fact that we weren't wasting it - more that we just happened to have tupperware to hand