Sloe gin, warm dog, piece of baklava, Joanna Trollope novel, thick socks, HIGNFY and this blanket:
Chunky wool/alpaca blend; started knitting it some time late spring, with a view to taking it to knitting camp instead of a sleeping bag. This event was a fibre arts festival held in central Finistère which I and my Quessquitricote knitting buddies had rather dared each other to go to and camp out in pop-up tents without husbands or dogs. I really would have done it, but the conflagration intervened and minching off on a fibre arts jolly was no longer on the cards. However, three of my pals made it and sent me a post card, and I got the blanket finished in time anyway; before I had even woven the ends in, Tom had grabbed it and started sleeping under it during our first stay at the gite, where despite its wool and camelid weight and cosiness, he found it more breathable and comfortable than the duvet there in the early, nightmares and night sweats days after the fire.
Now, happily, it's getting chilly enough to enjoy snuggling under it on the sofa. The fibre festival takes place somewhere way off down south next year, so I doubt I'll make it to it then, but who knows, I may yet get to camp out with the blanket. I've really had enough adventures for this year though.
10 comments:
There's nothing like a warm throw to snuggle under.
Lovely warm looking blanket. We've just switched over to our chocolate quilt, even though half the time I'm throwing it off, the rest of the time I'm snuggling under.
Hope you get to camp with it, but only if you want to .
"he found it more breathable and comfortable than the duvet" - exactly why I cannot abide duvets of whatever "tog". Why also that I dislike most hotels these days - they all use duvets, not for our comfort but their convenience.
Give me blankets and sheets every time.
Wonderful, a shared HIGNFY. And didn't Ian Hislop do us proud? Telling the Tory MP that the High Court was in fact supporting the Brexit aims by trying to restore sovereignty to the British parliament - wasn't that what they'd been asking for? And then inverting the Brexit post-referendum rejoinder towards the Remainers (now known as the Re-moaners): saying a decision had been legitimately taken and it was up to the losers to accept it. Concisely and ironically without any of the mouth-foaming rhetoric Brexiteers are prone to.
And then Joanna Trollope whose novels can be regarded as balaclavas. Whoops, got that wrong. The stuff you're referring to is Greekish, possibly Turkish, and is edible. A mistake anyone could make.
The RRs switched to duvets within the last couple of years; just the sort of treacherous, unpatriotic behaviour to be expected from pro-European sympathisers.
Here in the wilds, it is time for me to bring out my woolen Native American turtle blanket.
Thanks again.
Cat - indeed there isn't!
Z - just made the bed up with a rather nice new brown and purple quilt, I fear I'll be too hot but it is cosy. I haven't in fact camped for nearly thirty years, I think, and was a bit trepidatious. Maybe the moment has passed now.
Avus - I thought in fact hotels preferred flat sheets and blankets as much easier to change than duvet covers. Can't remember what the ones I've stayed in have had, flat sheets, light fleece blankets and thin quilts I think, which tend to be our preferred thing in summer at home too. Natural fibres are good though. My problem with hotels often though is just that the rooms are too hot and it's difficult to open windows satisfactorily.
Robbie - yes 'suck it up!' - I liked that. Joanna Trollope as a balaclava, heheh! Something warm and cosy and muffled to wrap your head up in against a cold hard world! I'm rather pleased to have remembered her as a kind of light weight indulgence which is also quite satisfying and well-written. I often wish I could enjoy light fiction and chick lit more, but most of it irritates me to death and leaves me feeling I've had my precious time wasted. The baklava was Lebanese in fact, Tom's daughter brought it over, from a Lebanese restaurant and deli they frequent. It was, rather like JT, an indulgent treat, very sweet and without much food value but well made from good ingredients. Duvets. A linguistic misappropriation, they aren't called that in French but 'couettes', 'duvet' is the word or the down they contain(ed), as I'm sure you know. They've been around as part of British domestic equipment since I was about ten, at least, so are hardly a pretentious European innovation. They were then known as 'continental quilts', rather as pizza was first billed as 'Italian rarebit' when it first appeared; the covers were made from poly-cotton and had big pastel seventies flowers on them or loud geometric motifs. Most people I have ever spoken to about them, French or English, now use them in conjunction with a flat sheet to avoid wrestling with changing the covers too often. However, one French design difference which I very much appreciate is the 'forme bouteille' of most of them: no annoying poppers just an elongated open flap which is secured by being tucked under the mattress at the bottom.
Rouchswalwe - missed you there. A turtle blanket sounds the ideal thing to withdraw one's head under!
Very nice blanket! What's the novel?
Hi Sabine, thanks.
It's 'The Other Family'. I got it in an e-book bundle with 'A Village Affair' which was about thirty years older, and it's quite interesting to compare the two and see how she's moved with the times. All fairly standard JT territory, but more urban in setting and I'm quite impressed with how well she incorporated contemporary furniture -smartphones, google earth etc - without sounding self-conscious about it. She's always been a reactionary old fart of course, and I always find myself on reflection saying 'yes but, why didn't that person just...' and so on, but part of the attraction is I suspend disbelief, I suppose! And I do love the visual detail.
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