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curiouswombat) wrote2009-09-27 07:32 pm
curiouswombat) wrote2009-09-27 07:32 pm
365 Project Week 30.
It's been a nice week - a bit of a mixture of things happening, some of which I took pictures of, some of which I didn't.
Monday - Daw the Minstrel posted a picture of her shiny washing machine, and a short discussion on drying clothes ensued. I mentioned that although I dry outdoors if it is a nice day, I have a tumble drier as an integral part of my washing machine - not unusual in much of Europe, although I know that in many other parts of Europe they don't keep the machine in the kitchen as we do. I promised a picture - so here is my washer/dryer.
To the left is our little dishwasher - both are designed to fit under the kitchen work benches. The washing machine was set at 30C wash when I took the picture - the left hand controls are for washing and the right hand ones for drying - at the time the picture was taken it was just set to wash, not dry. The central buttons do things like longer or shorter soak, economy wash and so on. Right hand light column tells you where in the cycle it is. It really isn't as complicated as it looks! Perhaps I should have given them a quick wipe over before I took the picture...
Tuesday I wrote in my journal about the trip on the train to Port Erin - here is the engine driver checking the wheels when we arrived in Port Erin -
On Tuesday when we got home, D-d and I made our Christmas cake - which stayed in the baking tin to cool overnight, so got its picture taken on Wednesday, when I took it out. I don't know about you, but I can almost smell the spices from here!
It will get darker as it sits wrapped in foil in the cake tin for a ten weeks or so before marzipanning and icing it. New friends might be amused by the pictures of the 'art work' D-d and I have done on our cakes for the past few years - Christmas stocking cake, the cake of Christmas Present and the penguin pyramid cake!!
So, onward - Thursday - this is some wild honeysuckle, just growing in a hedge that I spotted on my way home from work.
On Thursday evening D-d and I packed her belongings into the little car - she was heading back to York on the boat on Friday morning. It was surprising just how well all her possessions packed in, and she cleaned and polished the car so that it shone like a new pin. I wrote instructions for her route down - things like 'Going over the bridge in Lancaster move a lane left' and 'follow signs to Kirby Lonsdale', etc. then we sat on the settee and she suddenly felt rather apprehensive about the whole thing and needed a cuddle. It was partly the idea of driving herself, when she hasn't done so off-island before, and partly the thought of moving into a house with nine new people that she hadn't met yet, to start a new course at a new college. All a bit scary.
So - Friday we were up very early to make sure she got away on time. By 8.20 am there was a phone call - "I got onto the boat and parked in the right place all right!" and by 1.15 when I was on my lunch break "I got off the boat and through Lancaster fine - your instructions were really good. I'm outside Ingleby having lunch at the Little Chef!"
She made it to York by just after 4pm. I finished my work day in the north of the island, and went to take some pictures in Andreas church yard - I'll post them next week. But this is one of the pieces of rune stone/crosses kept in the church. Sadly they didn't have bits of card with snarky comments like Braddan - I will have to do a bit of research... It is eighth or ninth century though - I do know that much.
By Friday night we had another call from D-d - the people she had met in her new house were nice, everything was going to fit into her room all right, it was going to be a good year... you may have heard my sigh of relief from where you live!
Saturday - I went shopping, wrote a bit, and wrapped up the gift that D-d and I bought before she left for the last of the extended family 21st birthdays. Max is my sister's nephew, or D-d's cousins' cousin... that is family to us - as I have said before, the Manx are like hobbits in some respects! Max is also the young man who had a pace maker fitted a few months ago. He loves cars and all things car related - so we got him a car-shaped wine holder!!
Our settee was probably not the best place to take a picture of it, but you can get the idea. It was his birthday lunch today - he really, really liked the present - not just a polite 'that's nice' but really enthusiastic about it - he and his cousin, my niece, kept rolling it back and forwards across the table to each other.
I have not put in a picture of the, over six foot tall, birthday boy wearing a bright yellow feathery head-dress with felt candles on it! I didn't ask his permission to show it to the world, so I won't! The meal was very good - but I have to say that had they relied totally on the food reaching us by continental drift it might have been very little slower than it turned out to be... we sat down just after 1pm, and we were just being served with our coffee at 4,30pm!
However - today's picture is actually of a small model 'harvest basket' made in salt dough in Sunday School last week, and painted by the same little girl this week - it is entirely her own work - I wasn't even sure what everything was going to be when she was modelling them - the whole thing is about 4" (10cm) across - and the most amazing thing is that Eilidh, the artist in question, was 5 only a couple of months ago! And yet there are clearly carrots, cauliflowers and potatoes there - although I'm not totally sure about the red thing - but I think it may be a red pepper.
How good is that?
I think my lunch may finally have sunk enough for me to consider coffee and a crumpet in a few minutes...
Monday - Daw the Minstrel posted a picture of her shiny washing machine, and a short discussion on drying clothes ensued. I mentioned that although I dry outdoors if it is a nice day, I have a tumble drier as an integral part of my washing machine - not unusual in much of Europe, although I know that in many other parts of Europe they don't keep the machine in the kitchen as we do. I promised a picture - so here is my washer/dryer.
To the left is our little dishwasher - both are designed to fit under the kitchen work benches. The washing machine was set at 30C wash when I took the picture - the left hand controls are for washing and the right hand ones for drying - at the time the picture was taken it was just set to wash, not dry. The central buttons do things like longer or shorter soak, economy wash and so on. Right hand light column tells you where in the cycle it is. It really isn't as complicated as it looks! Perhaps I should have given them a quick wipe over before I took the picture...
Tuesday I wrote in my journal about the trip on the train to Port Erin - here is the engine driver checking the wheels when we arrived in Port Erin -
On Tuesday when we got home, D-d and I made our Christmas cake - which stayed in the baking tin to cool overnight, so got its picture taken on Wednesday, when I took it out. I don't know about you, but I can almost smell the spices from here!
It will get darker as it sits wrapped in foil in the cake tin for a ten weeks or so before marzipanning and icing it. New friends might be amused by the pictures of the 'art work' D-d and I have done on our cakes for the past few years - Christmas stocking cake, the cake of Christmas Present and the penguin pyramid cake!!
So, onward - Thursday - this is some wild honeysuckle, just growing in a hedge that I spotted on my way home from work.
On Thursday evening D-d and I packed her belongings into the little car - she was heading back to York on the boat on Friday morning. It was surprising just how well all her possessions packed in, and she cleaned and polished the car so that it shone like a new pin. I wrote instructions for her route down - things like 'Going over the bridge in Lancaster move a lane left' and 'follow signs to Kirby Lonsdale', etc. then we sat on the settee and she suddenly felt rather apprehensive about the whole thing and needed a cuddle. It was partly the idea of driving herself, when she hasn't done so off-island before, and partly the thought of moving into a house with nine new people that she hadn't met yet, to start a new course at a new college. All a bit scary.
So - Friday we were up very early to make sure she got away on time. By 8.20 am there was a phone call - "I got onto the boat and parked in the right place all right!" and by 1.15 when I was on my lunch break "I got off the boat and through Lancaster fine - your instructions were really good. I'm outside Ingleby having lunch at the Little Chef!"
She made it to York by just after 4pm. I finished my work day in the north of the island, and went to take some pictures in Andreas church yard - I'll post them next week. But this is one of the pieces of rune stone/crosses kept in the church. Sadly they didn't have bits of card with snarky comments like Braddan - I will have to do a bit of research... It is eighth or ninth century though - I do know that much.
By Friday night we had another call from D-d - the people she had met in her new house were nice, everything was going to fit into her room all right, it was going to be a good year... you may have heard my sigh of relief from where you live!
Saturday - I went shopping, wrote a bit, and wrapped up the gift that D-d and I bought before she left for the last of the extended family 21st birthdays. Max is my sister's nephew, or D-d's cousins' cousin... that is family to us - as I have said before, the Manx are like hobbits in some respects! Max is also the young man who had a pace maker fitted a few months ago. He loves cars and all things car related - so we got him a car-shaped wine holder!!
Our settee was probably not the best place to take a picture of it, but you can get the idea. It was his birthday lunch today - he really, really liked the present - not just a polite 'that's nice' but really enthusiastic about it - he and his cousin, my niece, kept rolling it back and forwards across the table to each other.
I have not put in a picture of the, over six foot tall, birthday boy wearing a bright yellow feathery head-dress with felt candles on it! I didn't ask his permission to show it to the world, so I won't! The meal was very good - but I have to say that had they relied totally on the food reaching us by continental drift it might have been very little slower than it turned out to be... we sat down just after 1pm, and we were just being served with our coffee at 4,30pm!
However - today's picture is actually of a small model 'harvest basket' made in salt dough in Sunday School last week, and painted by the same little girl this week - it is entirely her own work - I wasn't even sure what everything was going to be when she was modelling them - the whole thing is about 4" (10cm) across - and the most amazing thing is that Eilidh, the artist in question, was 5 only a couple of months ago! And yet there are clearly carrots, cauliflowers and potatoes there - although I'm not totally sure about the red thing - but I think it may be a red pepper.
How good is that?
I think my lunch may finally have sunk enough for me to consider coffee and a crumpet in a few minutes...
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Love the wine holder and am duly impressed by the veggies! (Not to mention D-d's scary driving!)
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Have you seen those adverts for the salmon fish-fingers with Vic Reeves doing the voice of the ordinary fish-finger?
The wine holder is rather fun, isn't it?
What's really scary is that D-d is now roaming the roads of Yorkshire in the C3 - be glad that you are in the wilds of Cambridgeshire - or you soon will be!
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I haven't! (I don't watch much on the telly these days.) But they sound good...
Ah yes, wilds are much less frightening when it's so flat you can see for about five miles.
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I love a proper rich fruit cake - ours has lots of cherries and not all that many currants so it is not bitter. I'm sure I posted the recipe once - but I don't seem to have given it a recipe tag - I think it is just in a comment somewhere!
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And good job Eilidh! Those are very well done. :)
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There were a lot of different salt dough veg - but that is really good, especially for her age.
Actually my favourite work was that of an eight year old - he started making an angel, not very harvest like but never mind, only decided it didn't look right. So he squashed his dough back into a ball, and then sort of squeezed it a bit and declared it to be a roast chicken... except that by this week he, quite rightly, didn't think it looked like a chicken.
He thought it might convert to a cauliflower - but then he forgot, and painted it all green. At which point he added a bit of black, and declared it to be a head of broccoli - and, oddly enough, it actually did look like broccoli when he had finished!
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Oh the tortured paths some works of art take on the journey to completion!
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The cake and the honeysuckle both look gorgeous, but in very different ways.
(And the penguin pyramid is sheer class. But then I have a history with penguin decorations...)
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The pyramid of penguins was fun to make - one of my favourites.
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I have my Mom's 25+ year old Maytag top loading washer which just chugs along merrily with only two very minor problems in all that time. And the matching dryer has never had a problem.
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I am starting to do a couple of slightly smaller cakes, including yours, later this week.
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I bought a storage tin to put my CW Manxian cake in, after I bake it, to mature and be "fed." I've already bought rum extract. That, and orange juice is what I'll feed it.
That marzipan icing is da bomb. Is it hard to do?
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We can buy marzipan, and the white fondant icing, ready made, can you? If not, I can tell you how to make them - neither are difficult.
Both marzipan and fondant icing are simply rolled out and used to cover the cake - marzipan first then the icing over the top. Decorating is like using play-doh, then - you just add food colouring to some of the icing and squish it around, like with play-doh, until you get the colour you want - or you can just cut shapes out of the plain white stuff and paint with food colouring.
I'll see if I can find some good pictures and instructions.
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Interesting washer-dryer. Mine are stacked on top of each other, and also located in my kitchen. That's most definitely not a standard location; just a quirk of my teeny houselet. I kind of like it though-- seems like a logical place to me!
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Eilidh's name is Scots Gaelic - her parents are Scottish rather than Manx - it is pronounced AY-lee, although I have a feeling that, historically, there would have been a soft, almost 'th' sound at the end. 'Dh' and 'mh' are similar constructs to 'th'.
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So happy to hear that your daughter has had a happy beginning :) .
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She was looking forward to today - start time 9am - then she'll really have more idea what she's doing.
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Loved the description and laughed aloud!
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Actually, apart from continental drift, there was the possibility that they hoped global warming would warm the room, too - it was just a bit too cool for real comfort.
Such a pity as the food was really not bad at all.
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Love the carving and the wine holder, and great cakes from Xmas past!
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I do wonder if, tonight, after her first day at college, she will e-mail to say that there are others on the course that she at least vaguely recognises - or whether she will find one or two that she actually knows reasonably well.
The wine holder is fun, isn't it?
There are photos around of other cakes, too - but not on the computer - we've always rather enjoyed doing the cake!
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I'm glad D-d arrived at her new digs without incident, hope that her new housemates continue to be nice and she settles in to her new home and course without any problems.
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I have to admit ours is a more expensive one - it would cost over $1,000 at current conversion rates - but still less than they were asking!
It is a really useful piece of kit, though.
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The washer/dryer is fairly common in Europe - some of the earlier ones were not terribly good, but I do love mine.