Heatwave!

Back in Ireland for a few days, I’m enjoying fantastic weather. Now, I know you didn’t log on to this blog to read my musings on the weather, but the fact that the weather in Ireland has been so spectacular is genuinely newsworthy.

For starters, the weather in Germany has been awful for weeks on end, while Ireland, on the other hand, has been experiencing a heatwave. Now, I will warn you that an Irish heatwave means that the mercury hovers at about 25 degrees Celsius (77 degrees Fahrenheit), as opposed to the 30 or 40 degrees you might experience in other countries. Still, it’s about 10 degrees more than we’re used to. But rather than be thrilled at this unexpected blast of summer, the locals are pooped.

“Jesus! This weather has me murdered!” one woman exclaimed, as she looked around for some place to lean her tired bulk against.

“We might get a drop of rain at the weekend,” said the shop assistant, peering hopefully out the window.

“Oh, wouldn’t that be great?” said the first woman wistfully, fanning herself with a paper bag.

Irish people seem to be split on the Good Weather Issue. Some people view it with great suspicion. My Gingerbread Mother, for example, thinks it is a curse sent to try her. She reacts the same way a vampire does to daylight, squinting out at the cloudless blue sky and hissing when hit by sun-rays. We suspect that she might melt like the Wicked Witch in the Wizard of Oz if someone pushed her outside at noon; there’d be nothing left but a puddle of mother and her Ecco shoes. The Gingerbread Father, on the other hand, would gladly spend the entire day working in his garden

which, thanks to Ireland’s rude fecundity, is bursting at the seams with growth. Father is engaged in a constant Man vs Nature battle and Nature trounces him at every turn.

But it’s not only the humans who’re pooped in this weather. The animals aren’t used to it, either. Both the cat and dog have found themselves choice locations to snooze in:

Even the cows aren’t going very far.

An Irish Funeral

A death in the family meant I had to cut short my convalescence (= copious amounts of tea and medicinal doses of chocolate biscuits) to fly back home to Ireland for the rollercoaster ride that is an Irish funeral. Thankfully, I was able to continue my medical treatment (more tea and even better biscuits), and I now feel right as rain again.

When you live in another country, especially when you’ve made a point of studying its language and culture, you simply presume you’ve become familiar with all aspects of life in your adopted home. But one thing no language and culture course prepares you for is death and funerals. How we send off our nearest and dearest is an integral part of our social behaviour, and at the same time, it’s something people would rather not talk about. And it’s not surprising: I don’t have a copy on hand, but I’m quite sure it wasn’t on Dale Carnegie’s list of recommended chit-chat topics in How to Make Friends and Influence People.

My experience in Germany has been that death is very intimate and low-key. The funerals I’ve attended have been immediate family only, and the ceremonies were quiet and tasteful. I almost committed a massive faux pas by inviting myself to a funeral ceremony, thinking – Irish-style – that it was the correct thing to do. I was gently informed that the funeral was for immediate family only, the subtext being that the presence of strangers – or, in my case, simply non-family members (I did know the deceased, honest, I wasn’t trying to gatecrash a complete stranger’s funeral) – was intrusive and inappropriate.

Funerals in Ireland, like many other Irish events, are basically a big clan gathering. And Irish families are very, very big. Not only are there (literally) dozens of cousins (in my case I have over sixty first cousins. Yes: six-oh. Five dozen plus small change) and aunts and uncles, but these relatives all have spouses and partners and off-spring of their own. An Irish funeral is only deemed a success and an appropriate send-off if it’s huge. Yes, in this case size really does matter. There’s no greater honour for the departed and the family left behind than an enormous funeral - hundreds of people in attendance. Many of the attendees don’t even know the dead person, but that’s okay: you attend the funeral of a friend, relative or colleague’s loved one to show your support for the person you know. And if the funeral cortege manages to stop traffic, if the local Gardai (the police force) have to be called out to direct cars... well, then, the funeral was a smashing success and the family can rest assured that justice was done to their loss.

Re-reading the above, I realise that it all sounds a bit mafioso-like: “Come and pay-a the respect-a to the Family!” but while there are a lot of men in black suits and dark cars, no rings are kissed, I promise. Instead, funerals are just part of life over here and they’re not hidden or sanitised or toned down. The funeral cortege leaves the local church after a funeral mass and the procession slowly makes its way to the cemetery, usually passing down one of the narrow main streets of the town. People stop and bless themselves when the funeral draws level, cars pull aside to let the hearse pass, and shopkeepers rush to turn off shop lights as a mark of respect. It’s solemn and respectful, and it’s wonderful and horrible. It doesn’t make death any easier or more pleasant, but it’s an ingrained ritual that everyone experiences or has experienced, and perhaps this collective empathy makes it easier to bear.

Grannies Galore

Work progresses on the granny square building site.


I'm building up a nice collection of squares in my basket ... but what should I do with them?


I'll just admire them for a while, then.

My New Buttons

Suffering as I was from a sore throat (although 'suffering' doesn't adequately describe throes of agony I endured. Just thought I'd add that, in case you missed that I was sick. I was ill, by the way - have I mentioned it already?), an idea for a cowl pattern popped into my head. Before I even tried it out, I had already found the buttons I was going to put on it. Aren't they luvverly? They're made by a great craftster called William, who turned to button-making for his wife Donna's projects. He can be found as Oruaka on Etsy, where he sells a range of beautiful handmade wooden buttons.

Anyway, the buttons arrived while I was in hospital (have I mentioned that I was ill? I thought I should, just in case you were wondering), so it was a lovely surprise to return to. The tragic aspect of this whole story is that while I was a-bed (when I was sick. Just a few days ago. In hospital) I tried out the pattern in my head: with green yarn, I started a cowl with cables and bobbles, aran-sweater-style, which would've looked quite fetching adorned with a cool wooden button. But...
...but....
crochet cables are soooooooo boring. Snooze. The fact that I was doped up to my eyeballs on antibiotics (because I was sick) didn't help, but I kept nodding off, waking up with my head lolling backwards on the pillow, an unattractive dribble from the corner of my mouth and my crochet in a heap in my lap. And I really had to force myself to pick it up and attack another stupid cable.

The result is that I now have a selection of lovely buttons, but no concrete project in mind yet for them. Nothing concrete, mind you, but about fifty different possible projects that just might look nice with a new button. In the meantime, let's have another gratuitous picture of My New Buttons:

Mmm! Aren't they pretty?

Poor Gingie!

Boo hoo! Poor me!
One sign that I'm getting older is a compulsive desire to tell people about my ailments. Barrelling through my twenties, I pushed all my aches and pains aside (how many people can boast that they gave themselves a black eye by falling headfirst into a toilet bowl? Not many. But it's a story from my twenties that I brushed aside with bravura - nowadays a similar mishap would leave me in a crumpled heap, but back then I carried my war wounds with pride.) Anyway, one of the advantages of having a blog is that you can bore your readers (all two of you, not including my Gingerbread Daddy and Mammy) to death with blow-by-blow details of my Wehwehchen (as the Germans call these little woes).

In short (and it pains me to shorten my litany of afflictions), after a week in bed with a sore throat, I ended up in hospital over the weekend with a throat abscess. Hooked up to a drip (see picture to the right of my poor hand, battered from the infusion needle), I lay in bed and tried to crochet by not moving my left hand. It was challenging, but I managed it. And every nurse who came in had a look at my green Kitties in a Row blanket and admired my ... knitting.
Oh, well.

An Army of Gingerbread Ladies

Why not, eh? Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of China, had a terracotta army. Why not a gingerbread army?

For starters, the Chinese Emperor probably had hundreds of helpers, while I was making my little gingerbread women all by myself. It was fun, though, because I was transported back thirty years to my primary school adventures with Plasticine. I spent a happy half hour rolling out Filo clay and cutting out gingerbread women and gingerbread hearts. At one point I noticed that my tongue was sticking out in concentration as I carefully stuck on buttons and smiles. I even felt a bit guilty when I poked a hole in the gingerbread ladies' heads. It felt horribly violent, a bit mafia-esque: Take that, gingerbread woman!

The purpose of these gingerbread goodies is ... to become tags for my finished work. Frivolous and silly - but we love frivolous and silly, don't we?

Ryan's Kitties (aka: Maths - A Cautionary Tale)

A very nice reader pointed out an error in my Kitties in a Row blanket (which has since been corrected.) Thank you, Ryan! It was pointed out that my starting chain was too long, by 3 ch. The sad thing is that I originally had the correct number of chains, which I totted up on my fingers and wrote down with a stubby pencil on the back of a shopping receipt. However, that didn't seem trustworthy enough, so I re-checked using my calculator. Maths and I ... well, we're acquaintances, but not friends. And so I ended up with a miscalculation. Back to counting repeats on my grubby fingers.

In order to check the blanket pattern again, I just had to start another one. For some reason, I needed a burst of green - I've never been a fan of greens but in the last few months I have used forty shades of green in as many projects. This blanket is almost ripe for St. Patrick's Day, isn't it?

Slurping Colour

I love colours, I really do. In fact, just for you, I've toned down the colours on my blog. If damaging people's eyesight were not an issue, I'd have a deep crimson pink background with splashes of apple green and deep orange. Maybe a bit of purple - just a smear - and lots of teal and turquoise. Alas, I have to live vicariously through my yarn basket.

I wouldn't say I have an especially good sense of colour - but I am very adventurous. Actually, one of the most attractive aspects of crochet is the fact that the juxtaposition of odd colours often looks very alarming while the project is in progress. It's only much later, with a bit of distance (and by half-squeezing your eyes shut) that you realise that the combination is actually quite ... okay. Maybe even ... nice. And if not nice, then so spectacularly ugly that it acquires a kind of nonchlant coolness - kind of a devil-may-care ugliness. And they're the most interesting projects.

Yesterday evening I started making 'granny's daughters' - the first round of a granny square. Some people love these but I find them quite odious to make, that's why I try to do a stack of them in the one go. Voilà:


Without bothering to contemplate which colours go together, I grabbed yarn and did second rounds, then tipped them out willy-nilly on the window sill to take a photo.


Now I know that some readers are looking at this and thinking, "Fwoaar! Beautiful!" while others are shuddering - but the thing is, I have no idea what it's going to be like (or even what it's going to be) till many, many more colours are added.

Frankly, I can't wait. On to round three!

Scary Stuff

What on earth?
I honestly don't know. It looks like a collection of Terminator heads - female Terminators. No, the Terminator's Wives. The Polygamist Terminator's Wives. I spent a couple of minutes looking at these ... things before I remembered that I had my trusty camera in my handbag. I whipped it out and, after a discreet look around, took a couple of snaps.

These, um, heads are to be found in the home décor section of a local store. My mind boggles. I don't know much about interior decoration but I'm at a loss as to see how these, eh, things could be incorporated into most people's surroundings. Elton John's living room at Hallowe'en, perhaps, but nothing else springs to mind. I was thinking of asking my Gingerbread Sister if she'd care for this as table decorations at her upcoming wedding - when was the last time you were at a wedding with a centrepiece of a metallic skull with sparkly mosaic eyes and a purple spider on its forehead? Talk about a conversation starter, eh? Complete strangers would be bonding in minutes!

Anyway, I restrained myself from buying 2 dozen for the upcoming nuptials and I left the store quickly (and yes, those eyes do follow you). Outside I was immediately confronted with another, ah, object:


It's hard to tell from the photo, but this is a four-metre high, head-wagging, painted porcellain ... well, I don't know quite what it is. The bystanders around me variously referred to it as a 'giant baby' or a 'painted Buddha', but either term insults babies or Buddha. I loitered for a couple of minutes, hoping to take a picture with someone in it, so you'd get a good idea of how darned big it is - but people were giving it a wide berth, as though the were afraid it'd hop up and come after them, wagging red tongue and all.


Thank you, by the way, to my dear friends and family, who've attempted to contribute to my blog by volunteering all manner of stories that they feel I should share with cyberspace. Alas, many of these stories somehow involve underwear, so you'll have to wait a while till I tidy them up for the general public. My mother gently hinted that while she has endured the crochet patterns, she'd much prefer reading something more generally entertaining. The hint has been taken, mother.

Basket Case

Yesterday I went to our local €1 shop (one of my favourites) and bought a bread basket. Let me interrupt myself briefly to say that baskets flock to me. I have a lot of them. I get given baskets on a relatively regular basis. Apparently, I look like a person who could do with a basket - and, frankly, I could always do with a basket. For example - this is our morning jam basket:


It was made by my brother-in-law (who, by the way, might like to make me another for a future Christmas present. Just saying.)

This is my practically-finished-projects basket, full of - um - practically finished projects. You can see the shawl I started with my Noro yarn (just one more row left to do) and two hat & scarves finished and ready for sale or gifting.


Here's my on-the-go basket with a baby blanket (nearly finished) and the makings of another inside.


So I like baskets (I have another two or three knocking around, but that's be going too far, eh?). I bought a bread basket at the €1 shop - it's basically a wire basket with a removable cover that you can wash.


Unfortunately, the cover was grubby from handling, so I removed it ... and decided to make my own.


There's no pattern for this - if you can make a hat, you can make a bread basket cover. You need
- a basket
- scraps of cotton
And you need to be able to increase (two DC in one space) and decrease (crochet 2 together). Simple as that. And because my tablecloth is so bright and cheerful, I decided to make it in the same colours ... just because.

The Creature from the Deep

I know it looks like some bizarre sea creature, like one of those floppy octopussy-like creations that come whooshing out of the darkness in a Jacques Cousteau documentary. Sadly, it's nowhere near as exciting as that: it's my first attempt at crocheting a shawl.

Let's start at the beginning, shawl we? Sorry - couldn't resist - shall we?
When Eyjafjallajokull (also known as 'the volcano in Iceland that no one can pronounce') erupted and we missed our flights home to the Gingerbread Brother's wedding, I went on a yarn-buying splurge. I marched into three yarn stores, determined to buy myself something nice... but I couldn't find anything nice enough. Then, on eBay, I got a bargain - four skeins of Noro sock yarn in a perfect colourway for a nice shawl to go with the Brand New Posh Dress I never got to wear.



The Gingerbread Sister is getting married in July, see, so the Brand New Posh Dress will finally get an outing. And why not make a shawl? After trawling through a gazillion patterns, I finally found one that looked quite nice and set about it.


The thing is, being the reckless crafter that I am, I don't bother much with things like swatches and gauge. If you don't knit or crochet, these may be terms that are alien to you - don't worry, they're alien to me, too, but only because I make a point of ignoring them. Gauge means that you check you're using the right size hook or needles with the appropriate yarn thickness, a swatch is a little piece of knitting or crochet that you do following the pattern, which you then measure to see whether you're hitting the recommended size. Tedious, eh? Yawns a-plenty. So I don't bother. I set off, gung-ho, and - about twenty hours later - end up with a shawl which is swallowing yarn but not getting discernibly longer, just - outrage! - frillier. Instead of being drapy and elegant, it sits around my neck like an Elizabethan collar.

So I started again, a simple wrap worked lengthwise. After three attempts, I've got this far and so far I'm pleased - not a frill in sight:



Close up -

'Tis Himself

When we moved in, the Gingerbread House was full of Stuff. All kinds of things. The previous owners dumped whatever they no longer needed, and left the stuff they thought we might have use for. Thus, we inherited a selection of heavy mahogony cupboards, some patio furniture and ... Himself.

The wife of the previous owner is from the Philippines and, it would seem, a devout Catholic. Obviously, she thought we were, too (devout Catholics, that is) and left us a curious wall mirror that sports the likeness of the late Pope John Paul II in relief. It's big - at least a metre tall - and doesn't much look like the Pope. At least, I don't think so.


Around the face there's a mirror, so we haven't quite figured out whether it was to be used as a normal household mirror - are we supposed to comb our hair while trying to avoid the Pope's gaze? - or whether it was purely decorative. If the latter is the case, it doesn't seem to have succeeded. Most people who see it tend to recoil in fright - if you come upon Himself in one of the darker corners of our house, he'll scare the bejabbers out of you, let me tell you.

We're now in a bit of a dilemma. First of all, he's got a moniker - we've started to refer to him as 'Himself' and he's a he, no longer an it (as in: we no longer say, "Put that thing away" but rather, "Turn Himself towards the wall so he doesn't frighten the electricians.") Secondly, we're not entirely sure what the etiquette of getting rid of religious imagery is. Thirdly, no one wants him. And believe me, we've tried to pawn him off on everyone who's come through the door - visitors, workmen, relatives. I thought I might be able to get it into my little brother's suitcase to have him bring it back to Ireland - surely, some good Irish Catholic would relish the opportunity to house Himself - but little brother refused point blank to transport our likeness of the Pope back to the Emerald Isle.

So now we're stuck with him. And like so many other things in the Gingerbread House, it has now accidentally become part of our rag-tag inventory. Some day, when I'm grown up, I'm going to have a real grown ups' house, instead of the curiosity cabinet we're living in now. Till then, I guess, we'll have to put up with Himself.

A World Without Planes

Such a strange week. Our house lies directly under a flight path between two big German airports, so normally the sky is a criss-cross of jet trails. In the past week, the skies have been silent and blue.



No white streaks across the sky during the day; no flashing lights at night, marking the path of an airplane across the black sky. And no noise. Not that you notice it, mind. You barely register that it's there - until there are no planes at all and it might suddenly occur to you that it seems a little bit quieter.

But yesterday evening and today we noticed the first jets scratching the clear blue sky.



Business as usual, it seems.

TUTORIAL: Kitty-Cat Afghan - Baby Size

This pattern is available in several places and in several slight variations on the Internet, so I cannot claim it as my original design - the author is unknown. This is a visual tutorial for those of you who, like me, thought this pattern seemed very intimidating at first ... but I quickly discovered that it’s a piece of cake. You only need to chain and DC, and learn how to do a cluster. In the last row you'll also do SC, HDC and TR - but we'll get to that later! This pattern is quick and easy – and very cute.

This pattern is done in American English. British stitch names are given in (brackets) below
Size: approximately 66cm x 82 cm
H (5 mm) hook
approximately 450 g yarn

Stitches:

• CH – chain
• DC – double crochet (treble crochet in British English terms)
• Cluster - Yarn over, insert hook into the space between shells two rows below, yarn over, draw up the yarn to the working row. Do this THREE times, so you have 7 loops on your hook. Yarn over once more and draw it through the first 6 loops on the hook, yarn over again and draw through the last 2 loops on hook.

Chain 103 stitches (see the piece in green below if you want to make a different size)

___________________________________________

Foundation (2 Rows)

Row 1:

DC in the 4th chain from hook, 1 DC in the next two stitches (3 DC in total), skip 2 stitches, *[2DC in the next stitch, chain 1, 2DC in next stitch = shell]. Skip three stitches!** Repeat from * to ** till five stitches before end. Skip 2 stitches, 1 DC in each of the last three stitches.

A short note before you go on. The pattern is worked in five stitch repeats/a 5-stitch pattern repeat. What does this mean? Well, for a starting chain, you need 8 chain to start the row (- the stitches in italics above) and the cats are based on a pattern repeat that is worked in five chains into your starting chain (the piece from * to ** above.) To finish off, you need 5 chain (see the piece in italics above.) So your starting chain needs to be in multiples of 5 chain PLUS 8 chain (to start) and 5 chain (to finish), e.g. I start with
103 chains: 5 + 8 (beginning and end) + 90 stitches (18 x 5-stitch repeats)

Row 2:

3CH (counts as first DC here and throughout), DC in next two stitches. In the chain space created in the shell in the row below, crochet a shell [=2DC-1CH-2DC]. Crochet a shell [=2DC-1CH-2DC] in the chain space in each shell in the previous row. Repeat till you reach the last three stitches, 1DC in each.

___________________________________________

Kitty (3 Rows)

Change colours. From now on, we’re going to crochet cats! You need a new colour every three rows.

Row 3 (kitty body and paws):

After the first three DC, you'll continue with cluster – shell – cluster – shell - cluster etc. Finishing with a cluster before the 3 DC at the end.

What is this in pattern terms?

3CH, DC in next two stitches. * Cluster [=Yarn over, insert hook into the space between shells two rows below, yarn over, draw up the yarn to the working row. Do this THREE times, so you have 7 loops on your hook. Yarn over once more and draw it through the first 6 loops on the hook, yarn over again and draw through the last 2 loops on hook.]. Crochet a shell [=2DC-1CH-2DC] in chain space of shell in the previous row, crochet a cluster between this shell and the next. Repeat from * (cluster - shell - cluster ) till you reach the last three stitches, 1DC in each.

Row 4 (kitty face):

3CH (counts as first DC here and throughout), DC in next two stitches. In the chain space created in the shell in the row below, crochet a shell [=2DC-1CH-2DC]. Crochet a shell [=2DC-1CH-2DC] in the chain space in each shell in the previous row. Repeat till you reach the last three stitches, 1DC in each.

Row 5 (kitty ears):

Repeat row 4.

___________________________________________

Doesn’t look much a like a cat yet, does it? Well, this is where it starts to get interesting... Change colours again and repeat rows 3, 4 and 5. Has your first pussycat appeared yet?

Keep going till the blanket has reached the length you want. I normally do foundation + 21 kitties + finishing rows. This gives me a blanket that’s approximately 66cm x 82 cm

___________________________________________

Finishing (2 Rows)

Second-last row:

Repeat row 3

Last row:

3CH, DC in next two stitches. TR in next stitch (in cluster of previous row), DC, HDC, SC in each of the next three stitches (you should now be at the chain of the shell in the previous row), HDC, DC, TR (in cluster of previous row). Do you see what we’re doing? We’re trying to even it out and create a nice top edge. Continue till the last three stitches, 1DC in each.

Edging:

3 chain, then DC around the edge of the blanket. It's best to use a smaller hook because you'll have to wriggle it through the stitches on the side and bottom of the blanket. I create a corner by simply doing 2DC in the corner of the blanket, 1CH, then 2DC in the same stitch.

You may not reproduce this pattern in print or claim it as your work. You may not sell the pattern. Do not copy and paste pattern to another website, please use a link.

How do I make this an adult-sized blanket? How many starting chains do I need?

It's kind of a difficult question to answer because I use a lighter weight yarn than WW, so my blanket would be a little smaller than yours. When I make this blanket for babies, it's about 27 inches / 68 cms across (without the border). So one way to calculate how many starting chains you need is to measure the baby blanket you've done and use that as a basis for your calculations. In other words, if I wanted a blanket that would fit a 200 m-wide bed, I'd do three times as many starting chain as I need for a baby blanket (68 cm x 3 = about 210 cm across)

If you wanted a more precise number, I would do a little gauge test with the yarn you plan to use:
Chain 13 stitches.
Do 1 DC in the 4th chain from hook, 1 DC in each of the next 2 chain stitches. Skip two chain, 2 DC in next chain, ch1, 2DC in next chain, leave the next three chain free. (We're pretending to start the first row)

Take a ruler and measure how long the last five chain are (in the first row of a real blanket, these five chain would be the empty 3ch between shells and the 2 chain each with 2DC - these four DC form the shell - in them). Use this to calculate how wide you want the blanket.

Say, for instance, your bed was 2 metres across. Imagine the width of these five chain was 2.5 cm (just off the top of my head). That means that in order to make a blanket 200 cm across, it'd look like this:
200 cm / 2.5 cm = 80
80 x 5 chain = 400 chain

400 chain
+ 5 chain (for the first 3DC and the two chain between them and the first shell)
+ 3 chain (for the first 'fake' DC at the start of the row.)
+ 5 chain (for the last 3DC and the two empty chain between the last shell and these 3DC)
____
413 chain*

(this number is only a wild example, please take five minutes to check it before starting to crochet a meadow-sized blanket :-))

Cats and Camcorders

I'm going to write up the 'Kitty Cat' pattern this weekend and, because I've nothing else planned (dramatic sob) use our new camera - which won't be used to take wedding snaps (dramatic sob) - to try and record a video tutorial (dramatic sob - oh, wait. One sob too many).

Martin Scorsese, brace yourself. You might have competition.

Pass the tissues. We're stranded

I was sitting in the school canteen, eating my rice stirfry and chatting to my colleague about our rascally students. Suddenly, the school secretary appeared at my elbow.
"Gingerbread Lady," she said solemnly, "I have some bad news. Your husband just rang to stay that your flight has been cancelled because of the volcano in Iceland."
I winked at her. "Oh, really?" I smirked. "A volcano?" Wink, wink.
You see, this morning I called into the secretaries to check that everything was okay for my day off tomorrow and they'd been envying me because of my impending trip home. They got details of the location, my Brand New Posh Dress, my Impossibly High But Incredibly Sexy shoes, etc and it was generally agreed that I was, indeed, a lucky duck. So when she turned up to tell me that our flight'd been cancelled due to this - well, let's face it - preposterous excuse, I thought she was pulling my leg.

But she wasn't
Woe is me. Or, better said, woe is us.
We're stuck fast in Gingerbread Germany. If it were to help in any way, I'd cry. Or smash something. Or scream. But unfortunately none of the afore-mentioned helps disperse volcanic ash. Luckily, we found out about it before we set off for the airport in Frankfurt, so however bad it is, it could have been much, much worse. At least tonight we'll be sleeping in our own beds and not on a plastic chair in an airport terminal.

But I'm missing the Gingerbread Brother's wedding and my little pile of Gummibears sits forlornly on the dresser, next to my Brand New Posh Dress, which is hanging in its plastic wrap on the wardrobe. The sight of them is so pathetic, I can't even bear to look.

I'm off to scoff a bar of milk chocolate and feel sorry for myself.

What's new, pussycat?

Just a quick 'hello' out to blogdom, because I'm getting ready to head home to Ireland for the marriage of the Gingerbread Brother to his betrothed. I'm in the midst of packing and already have one case full of yarn for the Gingerbread Sister. Added to the 3 or 4 kgs of yarn is another 3 or 4 kgs of German gummibears - we have not one, but two gummibear shops within a stone's throw of our house. Yes, you read that correctly: two shops devoted to the sale of gummibears and jellies. Read it and weep, my friends. I made the mistake of introducing my young, impressionable nephews to sour gummibears at Christmas: mandarine-orange flavoured jellies that have have a zesty sourness combined with tangy sweetness. Nephews quickly became insatiable jelly-addicts and now the Gingerbread Sister has added them to the top of her Bring Me From Germany... list. If I turn up without them, I might be faced with an angry pitchfork-wielding mob. Okay, I've only got three nephews and they're a bit small to wield pitchforks, not to mention the fact that I think it takes more than three to constitute a mob ... but you get the idea.

In the meantime, I've been crocheting baby blankets. No reason why, just so. The first two are 'Kitties in a Row' afghans: if you squint, you'll see the rows of kitties:



And the others were scrap blankets that started out with the purpose of using up leftover yarn, but as always, I had to buy more yarn to finish them. This is Murphy's Law of the Yarn Basket.

Buying a camera

We're buying a new camera. Actually, I tell a lie. I'm buying the camera and Mr Gingerbread is directing operations. Our little 3-megapixel Canon looks like a dinosaur compared to what's on the market nowadays, and I've discovered its limits because, goodness knows, I've taken a gazillion photos on every possible setting. Digital photography has set me free: no longer constrained by film, I can go nuts and snap everything in sight. Adjust settings and snap again. Adjust settings and snap again. Repeat ad infinitum or until I'm dragged away from the building, cloud or door that's caught my fancy.

Anyway, Mr G. has taken matters into his capable hands because while I take care of the artistic side of things, he looks after the technical stuff. He speaks Nerd and I don't, and this is a distinct disadvantage when buying a digital camera. Our trips to the local electronics store are like this:

Me: What about this one? Look, it's red. Isn't that cool?
Mr. G: Tsk, tsk (removes shiny red camera and replaces on shelf.)
Enter shop assistant, stage left.
S.A.: Can I help you?
Me: Yes, we're looking for a camera.
S.A.: What kind of camera did you have in mind?
Me: Well, one that takes pictures, ideally.
S.A.: Do you want one with a schnickity or a 25-blagette compluffle?
Mr. G: I don't think we'll be needing the compluffle because that's already been replaced with a zerzizzle, hasn't it?
(Shop assistant recognises a fellow Nerd speaker and from this point on, I do not exist.)
S.A.: Aha! (gleefully) But you can't underestimate the importance of the compluffle when you're taking 4-million fji pictures with a 93 million resolution! You might've had negative experiences with the 12-blaguette compluffle, but the newer models are really quite fantastic.
Mr. G: Yes, but is the blagette necessary if you're going to ollopf it in PhotoSlop? Wouldn't it be better to take the zerizzle feature and buy an external ollopficator?

At this point, I'm usually to be found in a waking coma, staring at the tripods as though entranced. After a while, Mr Gingerbread comes and picks me up, and then excitedly reports all of his newly-acquired knowledge on the long journey home. Okay, we only live five minutes from the electronics store, but it seems like a long way away when you're expected to respond to this conversation: "And then I asked him what the life-expectancy of the jilostify lens was and he said it would be far more sensible to invest in a sibaquate filter and combine that with the zerzizzle. And then I said, why don't we just go for the compluffle with the..."

At the end of the day, I just want something that will allow me to take a few pictures of the things that hold a strange fascination for me, e.g. The Sky

Deauville in Normandy, France

and colouredy buildings



and odd doors



and, most of all, food. Especially cake. Had you noticed?



Unfortunately, I don't know how to say, "I need a camera to take photos of the sky, buildings and cake" in Nerdspeak, so I can only hope my husband has interpreted my wishes correctly and has ordered one that will allow me to take some nice snaps.

Hold your breath, readers. We'll see whether he's made the right choice very, very soon...