The Bluestocking - your local women's pub, warm, friendly, and not at all unusual in any way.

[MarieDeGournay]

Welcome to The Bluestocking, the welcome is warm, the conversation is wide-ranging, the food and drink are delicious but magically free from anything they need to be free from, and the bar staff are highly-trained, professional, efficient and very friendly gerbils.

Jaggy knitted Aran jumpers and cardigans were my nemesis as a youngster.

As another with a 'weak chest' as well as eczema, I think I benefitted from early research into allergies. In my upper primary school years I was taken to the local infirmary for a sensitivity test to see what I reacted to. It turned out the main triggers were house dust and animal dander, especially horsehair (found in wall plaster in old houses like the one we lived in). I was treated with a six month course of desensitising injections, which really did help to reduce the severity of my asthma attacks and skin reactions. Thank goodness for that, as there were no specialised drugs for asthma back then.

All that conversation about breakfasts and cake upthread has me hankering for scones with clotted cream and jam. I can make the former and the latter, but nowhere around here sells clotted cream except possibly Whole Foods, known locally as Whole Paypacket, which charges. $10 for a six ounce jar.

I feel 'Can you make your own clotted cream?' is a perfect MN thread (or Bluey topic).

Yes you can. But i forget how. Google will know!

Google does know.
TL:DR
Get some double cream and heat it overnight in a very low oven.

I wonder if a slow cooker would work? Probably not because of evaporation issues....

That's really interesting! It's great that you got the desensitising treatment.
I was allergic to house dust too, in fact I probably still am but I don't come across that specific kind of dust any more.

That may be why I've never liked dark old houses, whether to live in or to visit, I can't get out into the fresh air soon enough!

I've read that some famous architects like Le Corbusier had allergies and OCD etc. that influenced their liking for clean, smooth, clear white spaces, and buildings built on columns, 'pilotis', that keep them away from the nasty mucky ground!

Cath Kidston patterns are too over the top. My sister is a fan and when I went in one of their shops with her I felt physically ill and had to leave and wait outside. I think it makes the tomboy child me who hated being dressed in pink angry

I like Cath Kidston in small doses - my knitting bag is a CK canvas tote, and I love it. You can definitely have too much of a good thing, though!

I can do KK prints on dresses on small girls, or here and there in a patchwork quilt, but large expanses set my teeth on edge.

Like Hypatia, I was a tomboy, but any birthday party involved my mother shoving me into a floral print dress, persuading me to put on horrible itchy lace socks, and prinking my hair.

The only party dress I ever liked looked floral from distance, but close inspection revealed vegetation and tortoises.

I am - I realise, typing this - trying to persuade DH away from the more floral of the two choices of curtain fabric which have made the final cut. The one I like more is 'too dark'.

Am helping pack up daughters with DH and other grandad over from Portugal

nearly got all boxed up big move tomorrow

bloody starving

pizza on order yeah

never get one at home

Just back from a week’s holiday in London. It really is a wonderful city, it was a good kickoff to my retirement. The older we get the more we’re learning to appreciate art - there are so many wonders.

Arrived home to realise that after the Christmas hiatus its Brown Bin ( ie paid-for green waste) day tomorrow so I’ve been out with a big torch hacking back the skeletal Michaelmas daisies so it was decently full.

From the sublime to the perfectly rational and not at all ridiculous….

DH always waited outside the CK shop, too! We actually have a nice breakfast set in her china (it was a present), but that's my limit.

Imagine Le Corbusier in a Cath Kidston shop....😃

Cath Kidston is something like the visual analog of what Lush does to my sense of smell. Nothing like as extreme, I don’t need to shut my eyes or cross the road.

The only party dress I ever liked looked floral from distance, but close inspection revealed vegetation and tortoises.

I like the sound of that dress, Edith.

I have three Cath Kidston dresses, and two bags.

I'll get me non CK coat.

I’m sure they look lovely on you.
well, what doesn’t on a puffin? You can do everything from floof to black tie and tails.

This is hilarious: yesterday when the AI told me I'd reached my limit, I gave up but today I carried on to see what happened. Well, it still makes images but they're cr!p. 😂I kind of admire that way of thinking. And it's even funnier because I wanted an image to illustrate sulking - which it HAS done, but not as directly as I anticipated. The AI itself is sulking.

Thank you.
Only two dresses are floral ( big, not ditsy) and one has big spots. But a floral puffin is special.

Testing, tesing over at the AI. This is 'a floral puffin'. I think you may have overdone the look, Puffers.

Ha ha Android. I'm certainly looking special there! 😄

The colours go so well with her beak, and would probably be effective camo to confuse black backed gulls.

Ooh I never thought of making my own clotted cream but I will try after I next go to the store.

The floral Puffin is very beautiful.