Piling Up

It's been a week where things keep coming in, to be added to the calendar: 4 birthday parties, a dance exam (jive), a school trip to a farm, 'Green' Day at one school, film club (Fern Gully), LEA appeal details - and a wedding: DH's youngest sister, in July. Although it's disappointingly not formal, so theoretically no excuse to get out of jeans and trainers. I have categorically told DH that there is no way on earth that I would go to any kind of marriage celebration wearing the slob clothes I wear all week; I'd rather stay home - except I can't tell him that bit or he'd jump on the excuse. He's not a social animal at all, and had been mollified by the whole informality and laid-backness of the event.

I've been requested to knit two specific items: Destructo Boy, who is mad for the World Cup, wants an England sweater; and DH has asked me to make a baby sweater for his colleague's baby in West Ham colors, the colleague being a Hammer. Pity the poor child. So today I picked up the yarn, in burgundy and light blue, to be told that under no circumstances is it burgundy, it is claret.



DH's Father's Day presents have arrived - nothing exciting, aftershave, a mini-vacuum cleaner, and a filter coffee machine. My friend Mandi, who actually drinks coffee where I don't, advised me on the choice of coffee, so he has some Sumatran High Roast and some Italian High Roast coffee to look forward to. It smells like burnt toast.

Some far more attractive smells arrived in the post today, from Jo at Sensory Perfection, ready for my next soapmaking session: Oriental Rose, a much truer rose scent than the English Rose fragrance I had from The Soap Kitchen, where I get most of my base oils from; YlangYlang Patchouli, which I find quite overpoweringly oriental; Cedarwood Patchouli, which I've used before and has been popular; 'Autumn Leaves' which has a fresh, woody scent; 'Forest Fern' which Destructo Boy says smells like squashed leaves - so, a fresh green smell, then; Lemongrass Verbena, which as you'd expect, has a light, fresh but zingy lemon scent; and a sample size of Vetiver, which I think is a heavy masculine sort of woody but musky scent. The Bay Rum fragrance oil that I ordered some while ago, thinking DH would like the traditional scent - I was wrong, by the way - sits on the shelf next to the sweet yet strong Honeysuckle that I've shied away from using because it may be a bit too much of a 'little old lady' type smell, plus florals are more likely to seize the mix. Plenty to be going on with, for sure.