alexist

Aliza is working on crawling. Today she progressed from just moving forward from a sitting position and putting her weight on her hands to actually getting one knee in the correct position.

Time to babyproof the flat (ha ha hahaha)

I'm annoyed because there was still excess dye on my purple Stacinators, and I lanolinised them with the Aristocrats--so my Aristocrats are now lavender. Not evenly lavender either. I can't be arsed to wash and lanolise them again (and see if the dye comes out or if it's really set--IIRC protein fibres require acid to set the dye) because they take so long to dry. (I say 'my', really they're Aliza's.)

It doesn't affect the performance or anything, but means I can't sell them, at least not for a good price. Not that I planned to sell them anyway--she's at the very bottom of a Large and they'll last her ages--but it's the principle damnit ;-)

All the stuff I had recorded on our DVR seems to have been wiped--all that's left is the episode of Heroes Neil recorded last week :/

I don't think Neil would have bothered to delete things--there was absolutely tons of space left. Wonder what happened?

I took the Aristocrats off the chairs where they were drying and they didn't feel completely lanolinised (I've only done it a couple of times; I'm still not perfect with it, especially since I'm using melted Lansinoh) so I figured I might as well wash them and see. They're still purple. I guess that the water was hot/acidic enough to make it set. (I do have a habit of having the water a little hotter than I should--too impatient to cool it and risk the lanolin lumping up, although I've never felted anything, phew--so that probably did it.

Just checked Dharma Trading's dyes--acid dyes do require hot water to set. (I know a little bit about dyeing from all the threads on TBW about dying the natural linen/hemp wraps, but of course being plant fibres, the dyeing procedure is totally different.)

They're interviewing people in the queue outside the Northern Rock branch in Golders Green. I'm half tempted to go there tomorrow and see how bad the queue is ;) (Neil says I'm a ghoul.)

Yes, Alastair Darling has guaranteed everyone's deposits, but the fact is that most people's were anyway (you would only lose amounts over £35K) and that didn't stop everyone running. I suspect that preventing a general run on the banks is what Darling's trying to do.

If this segment of the mortgage market does go like it did in the US, we might finally see a downturn in the housing market here. Long term the London market is going nowhere but up--it's a question of supply and demand. London's population is rising and household size is shrinking. However, a fair bit of this has been based on aggressive mortgage lenders. if banks are no longer willing to let people stretch to these high multiple mortgages, the growth in the housing market has to stop. The high end of the market is driven by City bonuses and international trends, but the middle market is outrageous--it's far beyond what people on ordinary, even good, wages can afford, and I suspect that many people have been stretching themselves to the limit to get in on it before prices climb completely out of their reach. (An ordinary 3 bed semi in my area, which is a nice but not exceptional one, will start at around £350K.)

PS. Paxo presenting tonight! *happy*

ETA: Bah! RT website lied! It's Gavin Esler :(