ps you have to be brave.

I am currently in the final countdown of a major grant application at work but I had to mark Valentine's Day by sharing this absolutely gorgeous bit of writing I recently read.  

 

Jeanette Winterson on How We Fall in Love

You don’t fall in love like you fall in a hole. You fall like falling through space. It’s like you jump off your own private planet to visit someone else’s planet. And when you get there it all looks different: the flowers, the animals, the colours people wear. It is a big surprise falling in love because you thought you had everything just right on your own planet, and that was true, in a way, but then somebody signalled to you across space and the only way you could visit was to take a giant jump. Away you go, falling into someone else’s orbit and after a while you might decide to pull your two planets together and call it home. And you can bring your dog. Or your cat. Your goldfish, hamster, collection of stones, all your odd socks. (The ones you lost, including the holes, are on the new planet you found.)

And you can bring your friends to visit. And read your favourite stories to each other. And the falling was really the big jump that you had to make to be with someone you don’t want to be without. That’s it.

PS You have to be brave.

warm hearts

If you're a knitter in need of a quick and cute Valentine's Day craft, you have to check out Mary-Heather Cogar's knit heart brooch over on Design*Sponge.  You can knit up one of these in the time it takes you to watch an episode of The Mindy Project (Side note: I'm late to the party on this having ditched TV last summer but Mindy Kaling is basically my imaginary best friend. "Best friend isn't a person. It's a tier.") 

For my brooch I actually sized down to fingering weight and 2.5mm needles.  The first one I knit with the recommended worsted and 3.75mm seemed to large for wearing but made an adorable decoration.  How cute would a garland of these be?

And here's a little adorableness from The Mindy Project.

julia & paul child: a kind of human chemistry

Now comes that season of delight

When Paul and Julia's hearts take wing

So through this migratory flight 

A dual warmth of love we bring

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the first broadcast of Julia Child's tv show The French Chef.  The occasion reminded me of one of my favourite discoveries during the Julie and Julia frenzy a few years ago:  Julia Child as romantic leading lady. With her towering build and unmistakable voice, Julia Child might seem an unlikely romantic.  But her marriage to Paul Child was one for the ages.  In My Life in France she wrote:
"Valentine cards had become a tradition of ours, born of the fact that we could never get ourselves organized in time to send out Christmas cards."

Even when it wasn't Valentine's Day you could tell this pair was a great team who truly enjoyed being together.

In her words: We had a happy marriage because we were together all the time. We were friends as well as husband and wife. We just had a good time.

In his: It was a kind of human chemistry. We met and started a new fizzz going off.