Monday 30th September

I've been practicing patience these past couple of days... meeting adversity with a (wry) smile and exercising considerable restraint over my vocabulary.

Why?

I had a promising crockpot crumble coming along nicely yesterday afternoon... due to ready for half past 6. What a pity that I ccompletely forgot about it until we were going to bed...

BB went downstairs to rescue it. 

Once cooled it was clear that the only thing to be done with it was to empty (scrape) the contents into the compost bin and pretend the whole episode never happened. 

Last night, before I bound off the knitting, I measured up the second piece for poncho no 2 against the first side, and discovered that, annoyingly, I had knitted too much. I checked my measurements. Twice. I ripped it back, checked again, and bound off.

This morning I checked again before sewing the two pieces together, and discovered that one piece is 5 inches too short, and the other 8 inches short. How? What? Seriously? 

Undoing a bound off edge and picking up the stitches is a tediously laborious undertaking. So I tried a short cut, just picking up stitches from the cast on edge and seeing how that would work.

Halfway along picking up stitches (using a thinner needle)

One side, after knitting a few rows

The other side

I think I got away with it...

On Friday, driving through rain on our way home from our holiday, just over the Dartford Crossing, the mobile phone rang. It was the housekeeper for the holiday cottage;

 "where did you leave the key when you left?"

"We put it in the keysafe"

"I could only find the front door key, not the back door key."

"Ah." 

It's remarkably difficult to rummage through all one's pockets while driving along the M25 through rain and the spray thrown up by the other vehicles. In the event though not much rummaging was needed as the key was in one of the storage trays by the gear lever.

I did offer to turn round; we were only ('only'!) about an hour away, but luckily she said it would be fine to post it. I parcelled it up while BB unloaded the car, and then he took it straight round to the post office. The 24 hour tracked service turned out to be not very expensive and she let us know she received it on Saturday morning.

If troubles really do come in threes, then that should be the lot for now...