Friday 25th February - I'm on a roll

 Don't get toooooo used to daily blog posts from me.... 

Today I have made, or rather, started, a hot-cross-bun flavoured no-knead loaf. I have read various posts about taking no-knead-bread and turning it into bread rolls or iced cinnamon buns or whatever, but that's adding complexity to what is supposed to be a simple process.

I have not taken a picture, as at this stage it looks just like the olive bread - a bowl full of unlikely looking bread dough with bits in it. Once you've seen one, surely you've seen plenty? 

It will be more interesting tomorrow, when I have painted the cross on (a sort of slip made of clay flour and water, I believe; briefly got confused with the Pottery Throw Down Programme there) and baked it.

Don't ask for the recipe - it was the same as the olive bread, with salt this time, and 'some' brown sugar and 'some' mixed spice and 'some' mixed raisins - probably around 3/4 pint, on account of I have decided (I know this isn't quite right, but it is easier) that half a pint is roughly a cup.

I measure out the ingredients in a measuring jug - very easy, when butter isn't involved in the measuring.

The daffodil embroidery is finished; once again looking much better in the photograph, probably because the fuzzy focus does such a good job of hiding the irregularities. 

   Maybe I should sew a (protective) covering of fine gauze over all my efforts? To cover up the errors?

It's rather like when I am performing a piano piece, especially Chopin; the direction to vary the speed (rubato) ever so slightly to help make the melody more expressive can be used to delicately slow down on the approach to a tricky bit to make time to get your fingers around it, and then a careful almost imperceptible speeding up again afterwards. Ah, so poetic! Such expression!

A friend who is a gardener has started working in our garden on a regular basis from this morning. Wonderful! In an hour and a half she has given our border the 'spring chop', including the salvia Armistead plants which grew to an astonishing 7 feet tall last year. I have had to admit defeat as regards digging and weeding and all the 'bend-and-stretch' movements that gardening involves. I shall continue with my vegetable 'hobby plot'; because everything is growing in large tubs and I can sit down to work on them, or at least only bend half-way to the ground. 

We are mulling over a small extension at the front of the house to add a downstairs loo; I've had a conversation with a builder a few houses away who it currently engaged on doing just this. Unfortunately, it turns out that he is passionate about never wearing a mask, anywhere, ever; they are just for people who are ridiculously neurotic about germs and such like, and masks are totally unnecessary.

So he won't be getting the job, it we decide to go ahead. I'm still shielding, still taking precautions, still keeping my distance, still clinically vulnerable to any disease that would directly attack my respiratory system. For the past ten years I've known that catching 'flu would be worrying; catching covid would be a whole new level of concern and consequence. 

At the same time, I am glad for people who can feel more relaxed about the covid situation with the vaccinations and better treatments available; unfortunately the threat levels are not yet low enough for people of all ages in my situation - whether it's down to weakened immune systems, auto-immune disease or respiratory diseases.     

Hey ho. Whatever is going on here, it is nothing compared to what other people are enduring all over the world.

Tiny Joy of today; seeing both the the moon and the morning star through my bedroom window when I woke up!