New Year, things I love and a knitting update

Well, Happy New Year to you! May it be a good one in all the ways you desire.

It’s been an odd few weeks. I don’t think that I have actually picked up my needles in the last three weeks. I’ve done a teeny bit of seaming to finish the blanket that I made for my sister for Christmas – finished on the evening of the 30th of December when I was seeing her on the 31st. Why I cannot ever finish something before the deadline is beyond me. Anyway, I’ll blog about it once she sends me some pictures of it (I forgot to take any) so in the meantime, here’s a post I’ve been meaning to write for weeks.

Jane over at The World According to Jane tagged me over a month ago and I really intended to post about three weeks ago but time escaped me at some point between the baking, seeing friends, a trip to Wales, an ridiculous chest infection and recovering from a few too many nights of revelry (which changes from my usual too many nights on Ravelry).

The Tag was ‘things I love’ and I am going to take Jane’s lead and not include people otherwise my husband, my family and my cat would rank rather high (ok, so I know the cat is not a person, but you should try telling her that). So here are 7 things that I love:

1. Hand cream. I have a real fascination with handcream. I hate having dry hands and have been told by friends and colleagues alike that their enduring picture of me generally involves me rubbing my hands together having just put hand cream on. I can’t have enough of the stuff, right now I have the following on the go: Clarins Hand and Nail Treatment Cream (a gift from the lovely Jacinta), a small pot of lavender handcream from Restoration Hardware (an American store) which is also from Jacinta, a tube of Body Shop's Vitamin E Hand & Nail Treatment which brings back brilliant memories of a friend no longer with us, a pot of the most lovely Heligan Honey Hand Cream (some of us suspect there's some Bergamot in there) from The Lost Gardens of Heligan which I bought when the husband and I visited there this summer (I can’t recommend visiting Heligan enough if you are in Cornwall, we loved it!) and finally, probably my best discovery of 2009, Aveda’s Hand Relief. I have 2 tubes of this hand cream and am literally thinking I need about another 4 so there’s one in every room, one in my handbag and one at work.

Moving on from the handcream before it becomes an essay...

2. Tea. Just plain breakfast tea. Made just right so that it’s golden and at that perfect temperature of really hot but just cool enough to drink. I love tea. I am clearly a bit of peasant though as I can’t get my head around all the other teas such as Lapsang Souchon, Earl Grey etc. Nope, just plain Tetley’s tea for me please (or PG tips or whatever, I really don’t mind as long as it’s breakfast tea). I am a great believer in having a cup of tea whatever the circumstance, good or bad. I grew up in Switzerland and we used to get family & friends to send us parcels of tea bags as the tea on the continent is just not up to scratch. I carry on that tradition by sending tea parcels to Kristine in Norway. (By the way, I like herbal teas such as Camomile, Peppermint or, my current favourite, Lemon and Ginger)

3. A cold bedroom with a warm bed. I don’t think that I need to expand on this, you are either in my camp or in the other camp. The camp of people who like a warm room. Sadly my husband is in the other camp. Sigh.

4. Hobbs. I have a fascination with Hobbs clothes. And their boots. I have the same relationship with it that many people in the US seem to have with Anthropologie - it's all lovely but I can only afford the odd bits, not the shopping spree that I would like. Oh well.

5. My stash. Ok so that may be a given for most of you. And I am sure that you all love your stashes. But I have recently realised quite how much I love my stash. In particular the fact that it’s full of things that I want to knit. So I have no need to buy more yarn and that’s been quite a revelation really. It also means that I am now able to accept the fact that there is a Sale at Libertys starting in a few days and I don’t feel the need to ask one of my yarny friends to put an extra bag or two of yarn into their baskets. Years ago, I’d have thought that was impossible. But there you go. Maybe I’ve grown up a bit.

6. “Sans Famille”. A French book that my mother read me when I was a child. It remains one of my favourite books and I re-read it when I am feeling down. It’s a real tear-jerker but with a lovely ending and it brings back memories of my mother reading it to me. Apparently it's been translated into English and is called 'Nobody's Boy'. I am not sure I'd recommend it if you are older than 15 or so, but it remains a big favourite of mine.

7. The final thing I love... ooh, it's a hard one. But I think I am going to nominate sweets. I have a thing for small sweets. I love Smarties and Jelly Belly Beans (I'll be going to NY later this month, and can't wait, just so that I can buy the biggest bag of Jelly Beans ever).

I am sure that there are many other things that would be contenders for this list (champagne suddenly springs to mind, chilled and with some canapes on the side...) but I think that I may be over engineering this list. And it would be nice to post it in January, not February. So this is my final list.

On the knitting front, now that the blanket is done, I need to look forward. The husband's sweater, Archie by Kim Hargreaves from the book 'Precious' is finished but needs sewing up and the collar needs knitting on. And guess who left all of the yarn for that sweater at the Knitting Retreat in Wales?? Yes, that would be me.

I'll leave things there for now, there are a few additional things on the needles but I'll blog about them tomorrow and we'll see if I'll have made any progress on any of them by then :)

Posted by Amelia at January 2, 2010 03:03 PM