Car-less in Suburbia update

So ... I've passed the three-month mark of my car-less in suburbia experiment. By now, I figured I'd be missing my Subaru, but it hasn't happened, even with the holiday snow and bitterly cold weather that kept me off my bike. Even when I have use of my husband's car on the weekends, I tend to stay put (if it's bad weather) or use my bike or walk (weather permitting).

DH bought me some nice Christmas gifts for my biking -- a high-powered rechargeable headlamp that I can attach to my front handlebar, handy for when I'm biking down the trail after sunset, and LED clip lights I can attach to the spokes of my wheels, so that people can see me better from the side.

The only thing I really dislike about biking is being in traffic, a necessary evil for some trips. Bedford's a bike-friendly place, but inevitably I run into what I call "road hogs" -- ignorant drivers who think they own the road and that bicyclists should be up on the sidewalks. I wish states would require drivers to review the rules of the road when it's time for license renewal as so many drivers don't understand that bicyclists follow the same rules and are afforded the same rights. When I'm biking on a road with a left turning lane and I need to make that left turn, I have to get my bike over to that lane, making sure I'm not cutting off anyone in the right lane. (I'm equally peeved by bikers who do stupid things like dodge out into traffic.) Now and then I'll get someone behind me who starts honking as I wait to cross the oncoming traffic to make my turn. Very frustrating, not to mention startling. God forbid the extra ten seconds I need to cross keeps them from their morning stop at Dunkin Donuts.

OK, I'm whining. I'll stop. Really, it's all good. I love biking and I love love love the money I'm saving by not having a car. My insurance premium has dropped to $22 a month, I went from two or three fuel fill-ups a week to none at all, and there's no upkeep/maintenance bills to be paid. This weekend, DH and I discussed selling the Subaru and I'm about 90 percent there. He wanted me to think about buying a car for the summer -- we've got an 11-year-old with an active social life -- but I  want to stay car free until October 1. Not sure if I'll be able to get through another winter without a car, but by then I'll feel better/less guilty about buying a "new" car.

Speaking of which, here's what I've been drooling over ...



A Fiat 500. Yeah, yeah, yeah I know ... Fiat stands for "Fix It Again, Tony," but it's so sexy. And cute. I've always been a sucker for Italian design, what can I say?

 

New Duchess of Cambridge portait unveiled

and ...

Oh dear. What happened? Did the artist happen to catch her after she spent the night with her head down the loo? She looks drawn, tired, and much older than her 31 years.

The royal family says they're thrilled with the portrait, but I guess it's pretty hard at this point to ask for your money back.

What do you think?

January light

Knitted hot water bottle cozy

Like a Victorian, I've taken to the habit of bringing a hot water bottle to bed with me at night:



I used to feel a bit geriatric about this, but no longer. I read an article in the Financial Times by British architect Ben Pentreath that rather than going out in the winter, he'd much rather snuggle up in bed with a hot water bottle and watch The West Wing ... substitute Criminal Minds and that sounds like a good January evening to me! And recently author Jane Brocket blogged about not being able to go to bed without her hot water bottle warming her feet.

I detest electric blankets. First, the thought of falling asleep enveloped by a magnetic force field scares me. Second, around 2 a.m. I tend to heat up ... I know because I wake in the morning with my bedclothes strewn over the floor and blankets kicked off the bed, and an electric blanket is simply overkill. Third, I worry about those blankets catching on fire. Or leaving the house with the blanket on. Hot water bottles can be placed where they're needed -- on a sore back, near icy cold feet -- and there's no danger they'll fry my brain or other parts. (My only worry is that someday my son will jump on the bed and the hot water bottle will explode into the sheets.)

Last weekend I finally got around to knitting a cozy for one of my bottles. The hot water bottle can get quite hot against my skin without a buffer, plus wool is insulating and keeps the bottle warm all night long. I used a free pattern I found on Ravelry and modified it to accommodate the leftover yarn I had from one of my Christmas projects (to be blogged about later). This cozy is knit from the bottom up, which means it has to be seamed, so next time I'll knit it from the top down so I can graft the stitching at the bottom closed. The wool -- a dark olive -- is very drab, so the next cozy I make will be bright and pretty.



Are you a fan of hot water bottles or do you associate them with cramps, Charles Dickens, and bruised knees?

Meyer lemon marmalade

From this:



to this:



The recipe is easy: chop up lemons finely. I used Meyer lemons, available only from November to early January. Remove as many seeds/pips as possible, as well as the thick membrane that runs down the center of the fruit. This is the messiest part of the job!

Measure the chopped fruit into a heavy saucepan and add the same amount of water. For example, if you get 3 cups of chopped fruit, add 3 cups of water. Bring mixture to a hard boil and cook for 25 to 30 minutes until peels are soft. Remove from heat. Measure out a like amount of sugar ... again, if you got three cups of chopped fruit, measure out three cups of sugar. Add sugar to pan and return to heat. Cook over high heat, stirring frequently, until the marmalade thickens and sheets off the spoon instead of drips. If you use a thermometer, this can be around 217 - 222 degrees Fahrenheit. Remove from heat immediately and spoon marmalade into clean jars. Refrigerate.

Now before you yell at me for not sterilizing my jars ... I get roughly four jars of marmalade from five lemons, all of which will be devoured by next week. Lemons are extremely acidic, which means they're a poor host for botulism, and I store my jars in the refrigerator. If you plan to give your marmalade away or store it for awhile, then I would advise you to consult with a proper preserve-making handbook.

Enjoy the fruits of January!

Happy 2013!

Oh how I love January.

I'm serious. The holidays are behind us, we haven't yet had enough snow where I'm sick of it, the days are getting longer, and the fresh new year teems with possibility. And then there's Maine shrimp, lots of delicious citrus for marmalade making, and it's still plenty cold enough so that no one blinks an eye should I cuddle up on the sofa with my knitting for an hour or two.

I hope you had a wonderful holiday and are looking forward to the new year, too.

I don't do formal resolutions, but I do think about things I want to do during the year. This year, I've decided that I want to read more. When I was younger, I was a voracious reader, but in the past couple years I've barely read anything beyond cookbooks, knitting books, and the occasional nonfiction title. This year I'm focusing on novel reading. My mother bought me a Kindle Paperwhite for Christmas, so it's the perfect vehicle for my goal of reading one classic novel each month in 2013. For January, it's Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, a novel I managed to avoid reading in high school and college. So far I'm enjoying it. (Anyone else think Dickens is funny? My husband is baffled as to why I would think this, since his recollection of Dickens' writing is of sheer torture.) And although February is a short month, I think I'm going to tackle the 1,000-plus pages of Alexandre Dumas's Les Miserables (en anglais, bien sûr), which I may have read when I was in high school, I forget.

I have a lot of other little goals for the year, but what I'm doing is making changes month-by-month. For example, I want to move more than I did in 2012, so in January, I've committed that I will walk at least 20 minutes a day, every day. When I break down big goals into easy monthly commitments, I'm more likely to meet with success.

I don't really have any knitting goals, except that I'd like to finish my aran sweater so I can wear it on St Patrick's Day. Knitting is just fun for me, so I don't like to tie it up in goals and production quotas, know what I mean?

How about you? Any resolutions for 2013?

 

First recordings of family Christmas found

Last night I was knitting and watching BBC World News when this story caught my attention. Curators at the Museum of London found the earliest recordings of a family Christmas celebration. The recordings, made between 1902 and 1917, capture the holiday festivities of the Wall family in London (above). Back then, recording ordinary family activities was quite rare, according to the BBC report. The phonograph machine was cutting-edge dictation technology used in offices, not in family parlors.

Do check out the recordings on the BBC's website. They are quite special! Like the museum curator, I, too, got chills listening to their voices, especially of the seven-year-old boy singing.