Thursday 3rd March - Locusts and Snakes

 I thought that title might get your attention!

Those were the pictures inside the first two windows of my Noah's Ark Lent calendar.

Two locusts; 'what the cutting locusts have left, the swarming locusts have eaten; Joel 1;4 ' for Ash Wednesday

'Be as wise as serpents and gentle as doves, Matt 10;16 ' for today.

Not exactly cheerful, but somehow fitting in with the times. One normally thinks of snakes as cunning and evil, but in the context of the rest of the paragraph, I think wisdom is what is meant. Unfortunately it is all too easy to use one's intelligence to twist and turn the truth. 

I shall be opening tomorrow's window with some trepidation...

I was very pleased with myself at how I was getting on with sticking to Lent yesterday - but when I looked at the clock it was still only 11am. I was reminded of this;

Morning Prayer

---

Dear Lord,
So far I've done all right.
I haven't gossipped,
haven't lost my temper,
haven't been greedy, grumpy, nasty, selfish, or overindulgent.
I'm really glad about that.

But in a few minutes, God,
I'm going to get out of bed.
And from then on,
I'm going to need a lot more help.

Who said religion had to be a serious business!

Knitting and sewing;

I have started the felted tea cosy after spending some time on research. I found a pattern for a felted children's hat, and from that was able to discover how much this yarn is likely to shring when it felts up. 

Currently my pattern looks like this;

but I don't advise you to attempt to understand or copy it. The only thing I am certain of at this stage is the picture of the teapot.

I'm using the same yarn that I used for these potholders; hmm, mine didn't come out exactly as this picture on the pattern, as I recall. Maybe I should have been a bit more heavy-handed when I ironed them! The website is a treasure trove of free patterns, by the way.

The sock continues, the wrist-warmers have been posted off, and I know that Ang has received my sewing on the postcard swap project so I can reveal the labyrinth I did;

French knots are a new skill; you have to know the magic words and say them with exactly the right intonation; 'twisty twisty french knot'. If you say it wrong it turns out as 'twisty twisty french no' which isn't too bad, but if you are really unlucky it becomes 'twisty twisty french oh bother' and now you are in trouble. The red blob in the middle does look like a heart from a different angle, I assure you.