Monday 2nd June - it was on the Monday morning...

that the gasman came to call... for the annual boiler service. We were told he would be here between 10 and 2. BB cleared the worktop under the boiler;

 Oh my, it looks all so clear and tidy, but you should see the dining room table. I wish we could keep the worktop this way, but then we'd have to keep the dining room table that way. 

Now, we usually have our main meal in the middle of the day, so by 1:30 we were pretty hungry. Then we had a text from the gasman 'I'll be with you around 2:15'. So I quickly made sandwiches, which is the sort of light meal we have at teatime. I didn't think it would work if I started cooking fish while he was taking the boiler to bits.

Once he had finished we ate our very early sandwich supper (!) and restored the lovely clear worktop to its usual state.

The huge white contraption is the bread machine, hidden beyond it is the crock pot, and the cordless vacuum cleaner lives on the washing machine at the end, handy for charging. 

It's all a bit muddling to have supper as a late lunch and lunch as an early tea...

Knitting 

I'm breaking my self imposed rule not to cast on any more knitting until I've finished sonething. (Rules are made to ge broken,  aren't they?)

It's warm enough to leave off a fleece jacket, but my neck still gets cold. I'm knitting a very loose version of a cowl using dk cotton on 5.5 needles

The new one is on the right. The one on the left is another version I made a few years ago, dk cotton again but on smaller needles.

I'm not really using a pattern. The original was for dk wool on 4mm needles and is warm and cosy, but these two are more summer weight. I've cast on 36 stitches, as for the original, and then I just carry on knitting patterns made using purl and plain stitches broken up with bands of stocking or garter stitch. The only important one thing is to remember to always knit the first and last 3 stitches on every row to stop the cowl rolling up.

Some of my pattern ideas work, others don't. It doesn't matter because I'm really just after texture, and providing it passes the galloping horse test* I'm not that bothered.

After all, when it's wound round my neck, who can see what's going on in the pattern?

*if you can't see the mistake while galloping past at a distance of 10 yards then it doesn't matter.

I'm hoping this will be a really really quick make...

Music

A youtube of Anitra's Dance just happened to catch my eye. Such a light, happy piece.

My parents had a record of the Peer Gynt suite, and I used to play it frequently. It was this one,

and I always found the cover slightly scary. My godmother used to sing Solveig's song for my mother when she came to stay, she had such a lovely voice. They did their nursing training together, the only two foreign girls, one Dutch, one Finnish, at a provincial hospital and became very close friends.