There are many things that stink about having to wear specs full time. Nobody ever talks about these things.

1. Smudges. Where do they come from? Even if I never touch my specs or go near anything gacky or sneeze or walk past a sticky child, smears appear.
2. Rain. What the hell am I supposed to do when it rains? I've settled for hiding behind my hair and tipping my head forwards and putting a hat on, and if the shower is heavy enough putting my specs in my bag for a bit (increasing the chances of smears, see above). Bloody rain.
3. Reading in bed. The only acceptable way to read in bed is head on pillow, lying on side, one hand stuck out to hold book, doona snuggled up over ears creating g a glorious snuggly head cave with hole for eyes. The only acceptable way. Specs make this Very Difficult. Special bed Pince-nez are starting to look attractive to me.
4. Hurty parts. Specs take some time for eyes to get used to. Nobody talks about other parts having to get used to specs. Sides of the bridge of the nose for instance. Or dear god the sensitive thin skin over cartilage at the back of the ear. The skin that really can't take much abrasion before the burny hurty sensation makes the spec wearer tetchy then ragey. That has had a week to toughen up and is still as wussy and hurty and complaint as it was the day it met the specs.

I can see better. I suppose that is something.

 

Hooray hooray it's le Tour de France time again and this time I'm in a country that shows le Tour on the telly. New Zealand, I'm looking eastward at you and squinting my eyes at your lack of Tour coverage...

And le Tour de France equals the Tour de Fleece, a spinning event hosted on Ravelry. Every year I enter and I haven't made it to the end yet, but this year I'm trying really hard.

Day 1 - merino fibre, I don't know it's origin or its colourway, purplish, spun crazy fine on my Ashford Teaditional wheel. I've been spinning this on and off (well, mostly off) since February and my Aura was still in transit, and crazy fine is my comfort spinning. Another couple of sessions and I should have 100g of singles over two bobbins ready for plying. Maybe it will grow up and become a shawl or something, it is destined to be lacy.

 

Day 2 - a very busy day here at Casa de Venus, so not too much time for spinning. Today's spin was a mash up of two spinning swaps I've played in recently, a fabbo new spindle from NZ, it is made of Kauri timber and I love it, and some Dorset fibre, from Gnomespun Fibres, colourway It's not Easy Being Green, and I love it. I've never spun Doeset before, being from the end of the earth where everything seems to be merino or merino cross and slinky and slippery, this Dorset was a huge change. It is crunchy and crispy and sproingy soft and squishalicious. It creaks as I draft it. So much fun. I'm thinking it might grow up to be a three ply yarn and then some socks, but don't hold me to it, I am fickle and can change my mind whenever I like.

 

 

I was spending some time with Monkey 4 at preschool this morning, doing puzzles with her at drop off time as is mandated by the teachers. Nothing new there.

I was chatting with the other kids.  Nothing new there. 

One of the children told me "My mum said that boyfriends can't go with boyfriends, they can only go with girlfriends".

Jaw, meet floor.

I suggested that there are lots of boyfriends who have boyfriends and lots of girlfriends who have girlfriends, and lots of boyfriends who have girlfriends and lots of girlfriends who have boyfriends, and that it was all fine.
He insisted that his mum told him that boyfriends cannot go with boyfriends, they can only go with girlfriends. "my mum said so".
Monkey 4 told him that she has a friend who has two mums and they love each other and that they can do that.
My flabber, it was still gasted.

I get that it is hard enough to ask questions about easily explained things to children and that the mum might not have wanted to explain tricky things on a given day.  I get that the mum might have been uncomfortable with the idea of her son talking about a boyfriend.  I get that she might be trying to protect him from unkind words from judgemental people if he had talked about having a boyfriend.

I do not understand how that mum can deny fact. Whether she wants it to happen or not, some boys have boyfriends and some girls have girlfriends. That would be like me saying that all people should be left wing, supportive of the current government and that everyone thinks that more money should be given to education and social services.  I WISH these things were true, but I know that they are not.  My kids know that they are not.

This is a wake up call for me.  Comfortable in my snug little left wing hippy socialist bubble, I forgot that not everyone in my world, city, suburb or school thinks that it is ok for boyfriends to have boyfriends. I forgot that not everyone thinks that all people should be able to get on and love the person they love without impediments put in their way, or that people loving people should be a matter for debate or politics. I forgot that to lots of people marriage equality isn't, as it is for me, a logical progression of equalities and human rights and overdue.

Instead of assuming that everyone thinks that adults are allowed to love other adults and not giving it much thought apart from sharing marriage equality stories on Facebook, this morning's preschool interaction shows me that I need to make more noise.

I don't have to live with discrimination every day just because of who I fell in love with. I have the freedom to get married (and divorced and remarried as many times as I like) in a civil ceremony. I have legal and social acceptance given to me, and these are so invisible that I take them for granted. 

Boyfriends can go with boyfriends. Girlfriends can go with girlfriends. It would be great if all little kids knew this like they knew that the sun is in the sky and worms wriggle. It isn't a judgement call, it's a statement of fact.

I'm going to track down some coloured chalk today.  It won't change everything, but I have to start with something to change my own little corner of this world.

This rainbow was on a street in Western Australia in April 2013.

I've cast on a new pair of socks to have in my bag to take with me wherever I go. I hate not having an easy project to have with me.

Yarn - Verandah Yarns, merino silk, colourway Mr Darcy.

Pattern - Simple SKYP socks

For - The Love Of My Life.

The last pair of SKYP socks I knitted for him got washed and dried in a hotel laundry and now they are more like felt booties. Sadness.

These ones will be glorious, the colour is dusty dark blue and gorgeous, and the yarn itself is soft and a bit slinky thanks to the shiny silk. A joy to knit with.

 

I have committed to achieve some goals in a Ravelry spinning group challenge this month. The challenge is organised so that each spinner sets her or his goals, and allocates points totalling 100.  We aim to get at least 70 points done each month.  This is for each of us to get more spinning done, and to spin down our stashes a bit.

My goals are to

1. finish spinning the last quarter of the singles needed for my cabled sock yarn (20 points)
2. ply and then cable ply that yarn (40 points)
3. finish the yarn on my Windwheel that has been languishing for far too long (20 points)
4. spin 10 minutes a day minimum of alpaca fleece on my little spindle. Those 12 fleeces aren’t going to spin themselves. (20 points).

I have finished the singles for the cabled yarn (20 points), and have finished the singles on the Windwheel yarn, and have yet to ply them.  I might even do that tonight, you never know.  The plying and cable plying will take a while longer, I will have to set myself up in front of a couple of good movies I think.  The alpaca is on a hiatus at the moment, since I can only seem to make decent yarn on my wee turkish spindle, and crap yarn on my wheels and other spindles.  I don't know how big the cop has to be on the turkish, so I might stop spinning on it now, take the yarn off, and start another cop.  Wish me luck, I'm not so good at handling singles once they come off spindles.

Go me!

Needing a quick dessert tonight, I found this awesome recipe for honeycomb icecream. I had never made honeycomb before, and it was as quick, easy and delicious as I had heard it was. I will definitely be making honeycomb again some time soon.

This is a nice quick ice cream recipe because it uses whipped cream and sweetened condensed milk, both as is, instead of having to cook a custard and then cool it before churning.  I'm going to make sure I always have a tin of sweetened condensed milk in the cupboard, because you never know when I might have a need for quick ice cream.  Better to be prepared for an icecream related emergency than to find yourself in the middle of one, I will from now on always say.

Monkey 1 has a friend staying the night, and this Monkey On Loan loves to experiment with cooking and eating. He was in raptures over the honeycomb and proclaimed the icecream to be the best he has ever tasted. Success!

Honeycomb Icecream

85g sugar
2 tablespoons golden syrup
1 teaspoon bicarb soda
400mL cream
1 can sweetened condensed milk (I understand that the Coles home brand is not made by Nestlé)

Grease or line baking tray with baking paper.  Put the sugar and syrup in heavy based saucepan and heat gently until the sugar melts. Boil for 1-2 minutes until it starts to caramelise.  Don't let the mixture burn.

Stir in the bicarb soda, then immediately pour the mixture onto the prepared baking tray but do not spread.  Mine kind of splodged onto the tray in a cow pat formation instead of poured, maybe a touch too much bicarb?  Leave for about 10 minutes until cold.

Whip the cream until it holds its shape, then whisk in the condensed milk. 

Pour the custardy goodness into your icecream maker, or freeze it uncovered for 1-2 hours or until it begins to set around the edges, then pop it into a bowl and stir with a fork until smooth.

Put the honeycomb into a plastic bag, wrap in a teatowel and bash the bejizzus out of it with a rolling pin.  Very satisfying.

Mix the honeycomb chunks, crumbs and dust into the icecream, and then return to the freezer for a few hours.

Nom it up.

Ours was needed for dessert before it was properly frozen, so it had a bit of a soft serve texture to it, but nobody seemed to mind.

I'm on FIAH.

Sunday evening and thoughts turn to the week ahead and my weird need to feel like a Good Mummy and bake delicious lunch box treats for the Monkeys.

The September edition of the mag "Recipes +" has a basic biscuit recipe that you can then flavour up any which way. The deal is that you make a giant wodge of dough, divide it into five smaller wodges, flavour these wodges, roll them into sausages, chill them, cut them into slices, and bake.

Basic biscuit recipe
385g butter
2 eggs
4 cups plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder.

Once again my fantabby KitchenAid mixer made me very happy, and made this job super easy and fun.

Cream butter. Add eggs. Sift flour and baking powder together. Add flour to butter/egg. Mix it up baby.

Clockwise from top left - custard, vanilla, chocolate, cheesy and choc chip.

Custard - add 1/4 cup of icing sugar and a couple if big spoons of custard powder, and a teaspoon of milk.

Vanilla - add 1/4 cup of icing sugar, slosh of vanilla essence, spoon of plain flour.

Chocolate - add goodly bit of cocoa, and some brown sugar.

Cheesy - add lashings of grated cheddar and Parmesan, and a wee sprinkling of cayenne pepper.

Choc chip - icing sugar, choc chips. Easy.

Roll out each flavour into a large sausage, roll it up safely in baking or wax paper, put it in the fridge. The mag says to make each sausage about 25cm long, but if you want dainty little petit four size bikkies, then a skinnier sausage is what you want.

Chill sausages in the fridge for 30 mins +. Or freeze so that you have a convenient supply ready in case friends drop by and you need to whip up a batch instantly. Yeah right.

Slice into 1cm ish thick slices. I put slivers of fresh strawberries on top of the vanilla slices. Bake them at 160 ish deg for 10-12 mins ish.

Omnomnom. Oh yes indeedy. The Love Of My Life proclaimed them "delicious". My work here is done.

If the cheesy ones turn out to be even half as good as the cheesy biscuits that they sell at the shop at the local markets, I am DOOMED. I have no control over myself when they are in the house. Watch this space.

I'm putting this here so I can find this wonderful video again when I need it, and also so that you can watch it and bliss out on the rhythm and simplicity of yarn and twist.

When I have cleared off the projects on my wheels at the moment, I am going to learn how to do this.  And then bliss out.

The Monkeys were out in the back yard this morning looking for sticks to craft into wands. They seemed to have the idea that they would whittle the sticks into shape, which isn't so scary when an 11 year old says he will wield a knife, but since an impulsive 6 year old was planning on joining in, parental spidey senses were screaming. So The Love Of My Life located his Dremel, and set to shaping wands. The kids were thrilled. As for me, I have always been very pleased with his wandwork.