Religion on Jubilee Day

Today, I walked down to the Bay of the Corracle, down the south end. It's a longish walk (though only about 4000 paces, according to my rather temperamental pedometer), but I must say I was glad of my holy socks.

 I got them first as a bit of a joke - this is the source http://www.holysocks.co.uk/, but despite walking round with mini whales on my socks and other relevant images, they've certainly kept my feet dry and that's the main thing. Normally, I'd sit down in front of the fire and watch tv. There's just two small obstacles: no fire (being replaced), no tv (being replaced).

So I did some baking instead, and felt that this was a very suitable recipe:

 Bible cake receipt:
A. 1/2 cup Judges 5:25 (Milk)
B. 2 cups Jeremiah 6:20 (Sugar)
C. 2 tbsp. I Samuel 14:25 (Honey) - my own! deliciously golden heather honey, just on the point of crystallising.
D. 6 Jeremiah 17:11 (Eggs)
E. 1-1/2 cups I Kings 5:2 (Flour, sifted)
F. 2 tsp. Amos 4:5 (Baking powder)
G. 4 tsp. II Chronicles 9:9 (Spice, likely cinnamon)
H. A pinch of Leviticus 2:13 (Salt)
I. 1/2 cup Judges 4:19 (Milk)
J. 2 cups (chopped) Nahum 3:12 (Figs)
K. 2 cups I Samuel 30:12 (Raisins)
L. 2 cups (chopped) Numbers 13:23 (Pomegranates?)

Cream together A, B, C and the yolks of D. Sift together E, F, G, and H. Combine the above together with I. Add J, K and L. Add in stiffly beaten whites of D. Bake in a well-greased rectangular 13"x 9" pan at 325°F for an hour or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

Serve with ice cream - if you can find a biblical verse which mentions ice cream. I ate the ice cream, but I must admit I'm still looking for the reference ... It was delicious.

I think I'll have another slice, and listen to the radio. It's set to Radio Scotland. It's a nice way to end Jubilee Day.

I never realised there were so many stars

In Iona, I'm normally pretty tired after manual work all day, so tend to sleep from 9 at night to about 7 in the morning, as opposed to my more placid Edinburgh life where I sleep from about midnight or 1 in the morning to precisely 5.18am (and don't ask me why: it's totally inconvenient).

So in Iona, I don't normally see the night sky. It was different at the weekend. For once I woke up about 3am and couldn't get back to sleep, so climbed down from my lair in the attic and absent mindedly walked into the back sun room where I stopped short in amazement.

The night sky was totally black, a dark deep of textured velvet; there was nothing to see, not even the reflection of the sea, no lights, no shade of the hills, no shapes of the sheep, lying to wait for dawn.

But there were the stars, hundreds of them, so bright, so clear, so many. In Edinburgh, I can just about pick out Venus, Jupiter, Orion's Belt. But here, it was difficult to find sky without stars, it was magical and really humbling.

I spent the night, wrapped in the knitted blanket I knitted for my father's room in shades of ice blue, sleeping on the bed sofa in the sun room, opening my eyes every so often to make sure that the stars were still there.

I woke at dawn to find them gone, just a soft streak of soft sienna in the middle distance, but my memories hadn't gone. It's one of those memories which I'll cling to during the stressful days in Edinburgh, when I have to remember why I'm in Auld Reekie earning money to give me the chance to be in Iona at the weekends.

Tulips in Amsterdam

Families are full of traditions: my husband and I go to Amsterdam for our wedding anniversary and have done so long enough for me to ask for advocaat and cream at Wynand Fockink in very understandable Dutch. This year, we went on a tulip hunt, though it would have been easier to have done a tulip avoiding one: of course they were everywhere. These, predictably, are at the Tulip Museum.



There's even tulips around at night:



More importantly, and as a bonus, the circus were in town. Not just any circus, though, The Circus, the Cirque du Soleil. We knew about it in an abstract sort of way and were strolling along the canal (any canal, it doesn't matter which) when we saw this:



After which, I defy anyone not to rush to get there. The circus was at the arena, so we shared the space with football fans, very strange. About the actual performance, what can I say? I think it was obvious the performers enjoyed it, which made it more enjoyable for the audience. And the sheer skill of it was breath taking. When the show finally ended, there was a spontaneous standing ovation.



And when I got back from work, they asked what I did in Amersterdam, with many nudges and winks: when I said I went to the circus, they looked at me in total blankness. But I stared back with a secret smile: I had memories from the circus performance which will last a lifetime.

Why is Culloden so important?

Normally, I wouldn't care about Culloden or even think about it. I don't disrespect the place or the memories, but I've always considered myself to be English.

Until now. I was talking to my mate Ziggy and got carried away with his enthusiasm. Damn it, I've lived half my life in Scotland. My home's here. My husband's here. I've got one true born Scots child (I went to the trouble of getting my son born in Yorkshire so he could play for the county cricket team. But as all parents will know, plans for the children rarely go to plan: my son never showed any interest at all in cricket, and the club changed their rules anyway).

So I've decided that now I'm choosing to be Scottish and am grateful to have the choice to do so. I'll keep my voice - it's BBC English and very useful for my job (some people say it sounds like the Queen - I hope not, I cringe whenever I hear the Queen speaking, though to be fair, I don't make speeches like she does or, for that matter, have her sense of fashion - one person went as far as to say it was the loveliest voice he'd ever heard. I do appreciate that, honestly, but would be a little more modest about it. But I like my voice and my accent).

Am I going to Culloden on April 17th to pay my respects to the Scots - and English - who fought and died there? I don't know yet. Maybe. My thoughts will be there, regardless.

Celebration

My boyfriend, who is infinitely superior to everyone else's boyfriend on the planet, bought me Big Cashmere. Every other project has been put on hold since it arrived, because I needed a dark green shoulder warmer with pretensions more than anything else, up to and including tea and char siu buns. I ended up adapting the pattern for the cardi I'm neglecting, after trawling Ravelry, and not finding anything quite right- the one pattern I thought would work with the yardage turned out to be dreadful, and I wasn't confident enough to adapt it because I only had 400 metres (the website says you get 115 metres per 50g, but actually you get 80) and the thought of leaving any or running out was pretty scary.

There should be pictures at some point, when I get round to blocking it and going to admire Jenny's latest project (rugs? Blankets? Her productivity puts mine to shame, never mind how she turns inferior yarn into such lovely things), if I can ever take it off. It goes surprisingly well with rose print fleece pyjamas, which I am still wearing because after last night's takeout, a two hour bus journey to college is a recipe for disaster and unpopularity.

So why hope and not faith?

So I finished the blankets - but still had a mountain of wool. Consequently, I decided to finger crochet rugs to match. In the meantime, I'd decorated the two bedrooms: I decided to call the single one Hope, the double one Faith.

So far, so good. But then I came to the colour theming of the room. Hope had, up until now, been in shades of cool blue and I transferred it to tints of green. There was an embroidered picture of moss roses; curtains which referred to a paleish green and the green carpet. So Hope worked. There was plenty of the same sort of wool I'd used for the blanket left, enough, as it happened to make two rugs and still have more left than I was happy with.


But Faith was a complete disaster. The blanket had been conceived as a homage to autumn, with warm browns and rich oranges. But the rug took on a life of its own. It was so beautiful: starting with pale yellow, it gradually darkened until it became a warm brown, then there were echoes of black. I called the rug "The Dawn of Creation", though a kinder title might have been "What a cappuchino looks like from above". It just didn't go with the blanket.


So back to square one. Hope worked; Faith didn't. But the good thing with Faith is that you don't have to get it right first time, there's enough faith to try again and maybe get it a little better, I guess that applies to more things than rugs ...

Oh, so tired

Poor blog! College has been very busy and I have been neglecting it shamefully. All I've had space and time to think about have been equations and reactions and how best to bear the natural exuberance of my classmates- particularly during the rather trying Numeracy unit that's just started. Almost everyone finds it too easy, but our particularly narky lecturer has decreed that we don't get to do anything more advanced because he keeps coming across bad calculations in our other classes. Difficult to endure.

So the cheering fantasy of buying a bag of wool and heading for the hills is sharper than usual. Jenny keeps updating me with the progress on the cottage- a proper shower! Snuggly blankets! Central heating!- and honestly, it's all I can do not to say to hell with it all, I'm going up there and not coming back without a new cardi. I have one on the needles already, in a lovely dark green, but I've been looking for an excuse to order from Colinette again- I think their Prism yarn and the rippling stitch pattern would work well together. Definitely one of the different blue colourways, but which to go for? Sun on the sea? Stormy waters? The sky from the comfort of the Martyr's Bay restaurant, after fish and chips and before dessert? Decision, decisions...