Bike hike

Well, the plan to get some exercise is going ok so far. The garden has been giving me plenty of excuse what with all the hedges and weeds to be sorted. Lopping down a few more boughs this weekend was less hardcore than the previous few weeks, but zapped me out even so.

The goats at Surrey Quays Farm are numerous and very friendly

Sunday was glorious, so after an hour or two knitting socks and tending to thirsty veg, I was pleased Mark says yes to a cycle ride. We headed towards the river using even more cycleways than I knew existed and made our way along the Thames towards Tower Bridge. A stop-off at the excellent Surrey Quays Farm for tea and communing with the animals kept us going.


Tonight, I was determined to keep up the good intentions despite aching from too much charging over cobblestones on my bike. Amazingly, i managed to put in my dues on both the crosstrainer and the bike. Not quite as satisfying as last week's unexpected burst of energy and loss of 5kg, but a good start.

Fig leaf surprise

After much pruning and the tree not taking the slightest hint that its endless growth was unnecessary, I arranged to have our fig tree chopped down last winter. Holes were drilled into the stump and poison poured in. But sure as can be, a few months later it started sprouting up again.
My one regret about chopping it down the last time was that the leaves could have been put to good use, even though the fruits never fully ripened.
Before I attack it again, I'm going to harvest some of its leaves. 
Most fig leaf recipes involve steaming fish wrapped in the leaves. It's also possible to make a variation on stuffed vine leaves.
But the simplicity of this Fig Leaf Liqueur recipe caught my eye. Depending on the results, we could even be making a start on this year's homemade Christmas presents.

Lewisham People's Festival

Last Saturday was dry, mainly sunny and just the right temperature for getting out and about. It was ideal weather for the annual Lewisham People's Day - a free day-long festival with several performance stages for dance troupes, acoustic and amplified musicians and so on. There was a small funfair, plant, craft, cake and clothing stalls and lots and lots of worthy community organisations keen to pitch their stories to interested locals. 


I liked the fact that as well as outreach orgnisations there were education establishments highlighting the offerings for continuing and return to education. With all the recent talk of excluding people from education due to very high tuition fees, plus the fact that it can be hard to find out about opportunities that are available, it was great to see several such organisations represented. 


Another fun element was the presence of 'bobbies on the beat' in uniforms from Peel's day onwards. Vintage police cars were also on show and I was intrigued to come across references to a police vehicles museum that was formerly in Catford - from the photos displayed it looked very much as though they had been at the old Ladywell Police Station. I will look into this. 

My friend Julieta from Knitshop on Lee High Road was holding knitting sessions at The Big Top. Entertainment going on behind her there including a public singalong in the vein of Glee and demonstrations of swing dancing. Across the other side of Mountsfield Park was a dedicated dance stage where, inevitably, teenage girls performed the routine from Katy Perry's California Girls and more energetic groups performed acrobatic dances. 

There was a curious chidren's tent with decorations made from recycled plastic bottles - a great idea, though the sharp ends of the colourful plastic flowers worried me a bit. A crazy bikes arena saw a successive of people take a turn on a revolving, six-handed cycle that moved in mysterious ways, much like a pedal-powered ouija board. I used the Kodak Playsport camcorder I was reviewing to take a quick video of this in action. 


There's also a video of the final song played by indie band The Cleaners (myspace link). We didn't stay until the evening, when the star act was Neville from The Specials and Fun Boy Three.

Go knit girl gets active

Knitting is great for relaxing, destressing and generally feeling creative, but it's a pretty static activity. You get to exercise your mind as you figure out how to fix those extra stitches you accidentally created and whether the pattern you're sort of following could work in an oh-so-subtly different way (alright, if you go freestyle).
But I can't help but notice that the summer months are wiling away and while my projects are progressing, my waistline is hardly something I'd be proud to show off in my summer wardrobe.

Like many people, I have a gym membership. I used to make pretty good use of it and, even though the one time a personal trainer told me cross-training for an hour wasn't as impressive an indicator of fitness as I thought, I ratcheted up the resistance dial and ploughed on harder than ever.
Latterly, though, the gym equipment and I have become strangers. My workout motivation ebbed away long ago and I'd far sooner be knitting, gardening or doing any number of other things.
Since the gym's no longer where it's at, it's time to act. I'll be waving goodbye to what has become little more than an excuse not to find another activity instead. Forking out £50 a month as displacement won't shift the extra inches I've acquired.
Instead, it's time for more walking, cycling and perhaps even running. Scary, but free and far more effective and accommodating to my lifestyle whims.

Barcelona blues

We’ve just returned from an early summer break. Having written a fair amount for the next issue of PC Advisor relating to mobile roaming costs, the practicalities of web access while abroad and the need to keep your precious gadgets safe from light-fingered strangers, I thought I was fairly well prepared for our holiday. 

Data roaming was duly deactivated, a neighbour drafted in to feed the cat and keep an eye on the garden, and a plethora of gadgets lined up next to the suitcase and abandoned at the last minute given the parsimonious luggage allowance of our low cost airline. 

Naturally, packing light still managed to catch us out: we had everything we needed for a comfortable five-night sojourn save the necessary UK-to-European adapter and the wherewithal to sort out our currency in advance – an expensive mistake given the harsh exchange rate against the Euro.

We decided to leave the laptops and iPad at home and take simply the bare technology essentials. This included admirable apps such as Word Lens on the iPhone – an instant menu translator that several times saved us ordering items we’d have found unpalatable. Advance warning that stuffed sweet peppers – a vegetarian tapas staple back in  Blighty – would come packed with cod made it instantly worth the cost of the £5.99 Spanish to English edition.

Smartphone versions of Lonely Planet guides saved us lugging about travel books, but the hardware itself came up short when it came to locating the recommended venues. Why the iPhone browser has no in-built cache I will never know. It’s not for lack of onboard memory. Having tracked down a half-remembered restaurant and logged its name and approximate location while in Wi-Fi range in our apartment, my planning went to pot when we came close to actually navigating there. Pressing ‘Back’ on a smartphone merely brings up a ‘no internet connection’ message. We’d racked up a £15 bill days earlier in similar circumstances and weren’t keen to be stung again. 

Luckily, our holiday friends had a cheap data package that meant we could get online and that saved the day.

Brockley Knits at Brockley Max

I've finally signed up to a Ravelry account, which means I can splurge details of my in-progress knitting frustrations on their forums rather than here. But in a bid to be more sociable with my new-found creativity, I'm making a concerted effort to 'reach out' to other knitters. My Facebook, Twitter and blogging will no doubt reflect this, whereas last year's blogging was more of a show and tell about my gardening endeavours. 

We're putting on a knitting event during this year's Brockley Max festival. On May 30th we'll be knitting and chatting at Mr Lawrence Wine Bar in Crofton Park from 7.30pm. 

Brockley Knits doesn't yet have an identity, so I've suggested we knit this fella as our mascot. You can see more of him at the Jellybums site.

Brockley Knits now has a Facebook page, and I'm hoping to get in touch with other local knitting groups so we can make a broader local event. 

Julia from Knitshop in Lee Green is probably our nearest local yarn shop, so I've asked her along, and I'm hoping the wonders of Twitter and Facebook will yield responses from the Fox & Firkin knitting group and their equivalent in Nunhead. 

Knitting's a lot of fun when shared with friends. Come along and see. 

Tesselating girl

It's amusing – or at least a time-wasting diversion – to mess around with search engines and see what comes up. Dave Gorman has based a substantial part of his career on just that. 

Starting points are simply that and can take you in all sorts of unexpected directions. You may lose an hour or three in the process, but there'not much harm in expanding your mind with some light Googling. Sometimes you'll learn quite a lot; other times, uncover unexpected links.

While proofreading some copy for work I came across the term tessellating. We use some interesting terms to describe different types of keyboard, and tessellating was a new one to me. I had a vague idea of its meaning, but wanted to verify it was the right word in the right context. Into Google it went.

Imagine my surprise when the top results (aside from a po-faced Wikipedia explanation) related to knitting. A tessellating fish pattern and lively forum discussion about it had pushed the phrase high up the Google results page.

Who am I to argue? Here’s the link: http://fiberphile.typepad.com/fiberphile/2006/01/a_little_bit_of.html – Expect to see a photo of a brightly coloured tessellating fish appear on my blog one day soon.