Thursday 29th June - day of rest

Well, it was for me, mostly. Himself had a couple of things to do;

I phone my father on Thursday mornings to find out what grocery shopping he needs, for breakfasts and evening meals. Then Himself goes to the supermarket and does the shopping, then round to my father’s flat to replenish the fridge and cupboard, remove anything that's beyond the 'use by' date and just keep an eye on things.

I haven't joined in since before I went down with a chest infection at the end of May; I just don't have the lung power to walk round the shop or up to his flat, even though I can use the lift. But we've in an efficient routine we seems to be working.

He's also brought back some herbs for me to plant out tomorrow and croissants for breakfast at the weekend, yum yum!

The other day I discovered this compressed tee shirt lurking in a drawer. It was a giveaway from an IBM computer event, from maybe 20 years ago? One of these 'just add water' stunts.

After about fifteen minutes it had soften enough that I could turn it over to see how the trick was done;

Much later I was able to unfold it completely and reshape it. It's XL size, and pretty shapeless, but will make a lightweight top for heatwave nights.

Another bit of space cleared from all the drawers full of stuff. Good.

A couple of hours of rain this morning means we needn't water the garden. Here's hoping for the same tomorrow morning. 

Monday 5th December - Another step along the way to Christmas

 

The little tree is decorated. This must be the earliest we have ever completely decorated the Christmas tree in years,

And the better of the 5ft Christmas trees that seemed to be breeding in the loft has been collected.  I added a carrier bag of baubles which are surplus to requirements and also too large for the new tree. I have kept the woolworths baubles which have come out every year since we married.

Back then we were living on an extremely tight budget, so those six baubles, three pieces of tinsel and a small artificial tree was all that we could afford. The tree and tinsel disintegrated decades ago, but the baubles live on as a memory of that first Christmas. 

*******************************

We spent the day in London,  another routine appointment.  Cardiology this time. Everything went well, the driving, finding ourway to a different part of the labyrinthine hospital buildings, and the consultation. In other words, no marked change, carry on as before. The consultant approves of marching on the spot as an alternative to outdoor exercise when it is too cold or wet so I will continue to get my steps in that way, 

 

Saturday 15th October - A new workstation!

 I am determined that my new desk/work-station should not be just another part of a 'surface-filing system', you know the one, where every flat surface becomes a place where things can be put until you know what to do with them...

My old standing desk (well, not so old) has been passed on to a friend with a bad back, and we have bought an extremely cheap IKEA table and swivel chair instead. I now sit facing out into the garden to work, distracted by the birds busy at the bird feeder, working in a good light, with a chair/desk combination which fits my needs. Perfect.

There's still a fair bit of sorting out to do - I went through the shelves on the left and threw out nearly 20 years of teaching resources - lesson plans, printed copies of songs and heaven knows what - and just general paper accumulations. 

However, they appear to be as crammed full as ever... 

Likewise the redeployed kitchen trolley to my right,

 but I haven't gone through that with a keep-chuck-give-away head yet; everything is just stacked to clear the piles of stuff that were somehow shelved in the standing desk.

So! Happy, happy me. It has been 24 hours since the desk was put in place, and so far the only things on it are my phone, my laptop, a mouse mat and a mouse. 

Watch this space! 

NOW - AN ANNOUNCEMENT FOR MUSIC TEACHERS AND PEOPLE WHO MIGHT LIKE SOME STORAGE.... I have created a temporary new page listing some remaining music and stationery storage items - A4 plastic sleeves with holes punched in them for ring binders, A4 pocketed storage books, etc and if you want them, comment on the page with your address (I won't publish the comment) and I'll be in touch.   

Friday 19th May - Dozy sort of week

 I don't know where he time went - things just kept happening. Nothing majorly major. 

Every so often, about once in two years, I get distracted when sorting out 'morning pills' and 'evening pills'. If I'm lucky (!) all that happens is that I miss a complete set. But just occasionally, I take the wrong set. Like on Monday night. I woke up at about 2am thinking 'there was one of those shiny blue capsules in that handful I took at bedtime, which means I used the 'morning box' instead of the 'evening box'. So I spent the rest of the night waking up from time to time and trying to work out if that is what happened, and what to do about it... if I had actually taken the wrong ones...

The worst consequence was only a disturbed night's sleep - I came to the conclusion that as long as I didn't take the morning pills AGAIN, everything would probably be fine. And it was.

But Tuesday was another disturbed night - too hot. 

I find that a couple of 'non-sleeping nights' can really slow me down the next day. It would have been okay, but several piano pupils have changed their lesson times this week and that always throws me as well.

Sitting and knitting might have been restful, but I had ripped out the Adult Surprise Jacket I had started, as I was feeling very doubtful about the measurements I had concocted. I went on the Schoolhouse Press website and bought the digital pattern, downloaded it, read through, recalculated and cast on again. I was right in that my previous attempt was wrong.  

In my befuddled state it took several attempts to write up the figures for the size I am making, cast on 268 stitches and mark the decrease points, and then get the first couple of rows done but eventually (several hours later!) all was well.

Do you know about knitting bowls?

It is a wonderful accessory. The surface is highly polished, and the rim curves inwards just a little, enough to persuade the ball of wool to stay inside. The curly whirly slit comes into its own when the ball becomes too light to stay inside of its own accord. I used a small wooden bowl until I was given the real article as a birthday present. The bowl was OK, but nowhere near as good as the real thing.

I have been going through the bookshelves and CD stacks and music (piano music) piles to see if I can sell them to ziffit.com. The reject pile was twice the size of the accept pile, but I still had enough books to be able to arrange collection by courier. Here's hoping they will still be happy to accept them once they have seen them. Meanwhile that's about two feet of bookshelf space cleared.

I'll try the rejects again when we go through the next set of shelves. Maybe they will take them then. Otherwise - there's a fete happening soon on our local common and a flyer came through the door for contributions for the bookstall. They are about to get lucky! Or unlucky...

We have been sleeping much better since we changed the duvet from the all-season one to the summer one on Wednesday night - even Wednesday's thunderstorms didn't keep us awake. Hopefully a couple of night's sleep will clear the brain fog...

    

Friday 29th April - Notebook nightmares

 I have too many notebooks on the go;

Looking at the photographs, I realised that the top two notebooks in the first picture don't get used much.. They tend to live at the bottom of the pile. The next one is a notebook swap - a sort of extended letter/musing/thoughts and ideas swap book with a friend that we have just started together, my green paper diary, the moth-patterned postcard embroidery swap book, a plastic covered book for jotting down current notes on a church group that zooms every week, a smaller commonplace book and another writing project.  

there are more... these stay upstairs. Most days I write in all the 'upstairs' note books; the green daily sketch journal, the purple morning pages book, and, in the evenings, I write about the events or non-events of the day.  ;

But they lie around in untidy heaps making at harder to keep a clear work space on the table;

I thought I had found a perfect solution, and sent off for a flat-pack desk organiser. NO NOT BUY THIS! It took us a while to assemble the horrible thin scratchy pieces of fibreboard; eventually we realised that the stubby little screws go into the notches, not the wood, and it became simple to put it all together. This is the back, with all the screwheads protruding. All the edges are unrounded and rough. 

It is entirely unclear from the instructions how the screws are supposed to go; there is also a helpful note saying that it is normal for them to go in crooked and damage the edge of the pieces but not to worry as this will note affect the functionality of the product!

 

From a distance, it look fine - that's why I bought it!

It does a great job of gathering up all the notebooks, and also paper piles and random bits and pieces, into one space,

.

And I now have a lovely clear space to work in, just like my husband's; he uses the opposite side of the table.

There were several moments when we came close to just chucking the whole thing in the bin and starting again. But if you, like me, were wanting some kind of desk organiser, I whole heartedly advise you not to choose this one! 

Saturday 30th October - make like an ostrich...

https://www.sciencefocus.com/nature/do-ostriches-really-bury-their-head-in-the-sand/

 I've been a bit pre-occupied this week, even though it was half-term and supposedly clear from all engagements (hahaha, remembering the old joke 'if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans').

I've a red spot on my shin, which has been slowly increasing from a small, negligible mark to a circle heading for an inch in diameter. So, back in September, the consultant looked at it while doing a routine rheumatology check up and thought I ought to be referred to a dermatology clinic. 

However, it took four weeks for her letter to reach my GP. They referred it on promptly, but I was getting a little anxious. I looked on the website to discover 'most patients are seen within 15 weeks'. What?!? I rang the clinic 'have you received the referral from the GP?' After a couple of calls, they found the referral and added me to the list. 

Learning Point number 1; it's always worth making a pleasant and non-argumentative enquiry of the clinic admin staff! 

While on the phone I did let them know that I was very happy to be offered a last-minute cancellation - half an hour's notice would be enough. Well, they rand back ten minutes later - was I free tomorrow afternoon? - was I indeed!

Learning Point number 2; it's always worth offering to take a cancellation!

The result is that the malevolent-looking patch is nothing serious; the sort of thing that people with fair skin and spend too much tie in the sun are liable to. Very occasionally the patch can develop into skin cancer, but there's no suspicion of this in my case. I have been prescribed some cream to apply which will make it much worse before it gets better, and 'I'll see you again in about 5 or 6 months.'

I had no idea how much this had been bothering me until we got back home after the appointment, and sagged into the armchairs with a coffee and chocolate biscuit apiece.

So; if you have fair skin, and have been exposed to the sun (I lived in the tropics for a few years), and have a funny red scaly patch on your leg, get it looked at, rather than worrying!

I do tend to play the ostrich game over things that are over-facing me. Like, 

finishing my tax return, (not done)

sorting out the boxes of stuff brought down from the loft which need the keep/chuck/donate decisions, 

working out packaging and posting and customs declaration for parcel to be sent to 'foreign parts'

I'd much rather create a little holder using an empty box and pictures from a bulb catalogue to store my glasses in overnight to stop them falling to the floor when I will tread on them in the morning

 or scroll through twitter looking for jokes

Today, however, there has been progress; the parcel has been packaged up, several keep/chuck/donate boxes have been sorted so that two crates have been emptied and three more bags have been filled for a charity shop run (poor devils - I always feel a bit sorry for whoever is on the receiving end at the shop to do the 'keep/mend/chuck process all over again).

The heap does look a whole lot worse, but it is actually a whole lot better, and will improve further once the parcel is posted, the contents of the green bucket handed over to the charity shop and the orange bag taken to church for adding to the Great Christmas Shoebox Packing event tomorrow. Then we'll justs be down to the blue 'pending' crate, and several crates of photographs. With any luck it will be clear by Christmas...

Oh, and ostriches really do stick their heads in the sand....

Happy Days!  . 

Sunday 23rd February - Back to work tomorrow

Halfterm is just about over. Another couple of hours until bedtime, and then...

wakey wakey, rise and shine



So, what about this halfterm? What happened? I feel as though I have been turned inside-out and upside down!

Saturday 15th 

Met up with friends for a low-key 'hen do', I suppose you could call it - we all had breakfast together at a local eatery. I then spent some time having a look around the wool shop (yes, I bought yarn, no, I'm not posting any pictures yet).

Sunday 16th

I have a feeling this was a lull before the frenzy of the rest of half term. I've no pictures on my phone to remind me  Looking through my sketch book I've found pages like these - I discovered a free on-line brush-pen calligraphy tutorial which is so simple even I can manage it, even at the end of the day. Instead of winding down with a couple of suduko grids at bedtime, I fill a page or two with 'pot-hooks'. I'm up to drawing the letter 'o' now, surprisingly complicated and needing concentration to get right.

Monday 17th 

The writing on the page above refers to a 'draw your day' idea; this is a drawing of Monday.
Lazy morning in bed, surfing youtube for tutorials on how to join granny squares together, and also making a few granny squares to practice with before I start on the real ones. Watching the stream behind the house come up and overflow the footpath and cycle track, until it was a broad rushing torrent of water. Copying tutorials on doodling flowers and leaves.

Tuesday 18th

House clearing. Keep or chuck or charity shop. Keep or chuck or charity shop. We came back with bags and crates of stuff - it is uch more tiring going through everything than I thought. The hardest part is dealing with things that my god-mother held dear, but that I have no affinity with, nor any desire to own.

 One of the items of clothing was the sweater on the front cover of this book - such skill. But it wasn't possible to get it into a good enough state to recycle, not even as a cushion cover. Nowhere for it to go but out.

Wednesday 19th

Going through bags and bags of clothing. Charity shop or chuck. In the end, ruthlessness took over, and the heaps of clothes were reduced to one bag of spectacles, one bag of bits and pieces, one load of clothes through the wash to go to charity, and four bags for recycling at the tip. They have a textile bank.

Going to meet with friends in the evening for our regular tea and cake and set-the-world-to-rights was a reward for the labours.

Thursday 20th

Back to my god-mother's house. To see the estate agent to sign paperwork, to the housing estate office to sign paperwork. To her bank to sign paperwork. To her house to scope out the next phase of house clearing.

Everything in the house sits on a green hand crocheted mat. There are dozens of them. Keep, sell, charity shop? Keep sell, charity shop?

Friday 20th 

James the gardener came, and I followed him around the garden recording his comments as he named plants and pruned them.

From this....

to this

It was fascinating to watch him chopping and snipping with a pair of long-handled shears - within an hour the whole border was trimmed ready for this season. I would never have dared grab a little lavendar plant by all the loose stems and just take off all the top growth with one snip... 

Then I went back to making four dozen Zimbabwean sweet potato cookies for a coffee morning on the Saturday...

Saturday 22nd

World Day of Prayer (formerly Women's World Day of Prayer) is coming up (Friday 6th March) and we always have a coffee morning in our area to show a powerpoint presentation about the country for the year - Zimbabwe - but you've probably guessed. As usual I loaded up soundsystem, microphone, table cloths, a tray of primula plants to make table decorations (just bung each pot into a tea cup), paper napkins (leftover from Christmas as I forgot to buy any), laptop, HDMI cable, printed copy of the script, and two tins of cookies. And, most importantly, my Best Beloved who has to put up with so much. I needed his skill to set up the TV/laptop/sound system/microphone connections, and his strength to put up tables and fetch and carry chairs. The other ladies appeared in good time and somehow, together, all working but not necessarily as a well-oiled machine, the coffee morning happened.

Afterwards I planted up the primulas with the last bit of energy and then sat in a collapsed heap for the rest of the day.

In the evening, Himself went round to deal with a problem on my father's PC, and brought him back for Roast Lamb, roast potatoes, roast sweet potato, carrots and peas.

We were in bed shortly after nine, and asleep before ten.

Sunday 23rd

That's today!

I've sat about - upstairs in bed for the morning, and downstairs still in my dressing gown this evening.

Himslf has brought me breakfast in bed (actually, he has done this just about every day this week!) and lunch (he has done this just about every day this week) and supper (he has done this just about every day this week).

I've been adding squares to this blanket that I'm making using yarn that I've found in my god-mother's house. I might not be able to, or want to keep her stuff, but making this blanket is a peaceful sort of thing to be doing, and when it is finished I'll have something useful to keep or give away.

Deep breath, and back into the fray! I've an easy start though - just three pupils to teach all day.   

Monday 17th Feb - The Loft Challenge

What a brilliant idea!

In a blog post someone said that their grown-up son has set them a loft challenge; every time he visits, he brings down a couple of crates and bags from the loft, and they try and sort it before his next visit.

I'm up for that; we're about to get serious about clearing my recently deceased godmother's house, and I am everlastingly grateful that she has already done most of the hard work. And she had no loft.

When we tried to clear my sister-in-law's house, we gave up; we would have had to go and live nearby for a month in order to go through every drawer and bag and bag-inside-a-bag which just couldn't be done. In the end we salvaged a few items and left it all to the house clearance people.

My parents downsized four times, starting from a large seven-bedroom house with three attics, and ending in two-bedroom flat. I am so grateful to them for all the hard decisions they have saved me from making.

I'm very conscious of the state of our loft; we have lived in this house for over thirty years and the loft is terrifyingly full. I don't want to leave our children with a nightmare to sort out.

(Do you think we could in turn get them to do the bedroom challenge? Every time we visit one of the offspring, or they come here, we could give them a couple of bags of their stuff to take away and sort? I don't mind storing things that they actually want, but I reckon there must be things that could be re-homed, re-cycled, or even actually used?!)

While I'm on the subject, one project that is high on my list is to sort all the kinds of things people need to know when the time comes into some kind of order. My god-mother's affairs where much simpler to deal with than they might have been. Although she had stopped filing things away some months ago, nearly all the paperwork was in piles in the same room, so gathering it all together and working out what needed to be done was massively simpler than it might have been.

Tuesday 7th January - Goodbyes...and back to normal (ish)

Today was the day of the funeral. It dawned dank and drizzly, but improved as it went on - a gentle sunshine for the actual occasion.

'Are you the celebrant'? er, yes, I suppose that is what I was. On the whole it went well - I have others to confirm my impression. Apart from starting a bit early, so two people slipped in a few minutes late, the ceremony went off more or less as I had intended.

There were buttons that had to be operated, the thought of which had caused a sudden lack of confidence on my part. However proved astonishingly easy to operate, especially when I practised beforehand, starting and stopping music, closing and opening curtains (not that I planned to open the curtains once I had closed them). 

I had a slight frisson when I realised I had nearly forgotten to press the 'close' button for the curtains during that piece of music, and a further scary second or two when I couldn't make it work (the secret is NOT to press the 'close' label, but to press the button BESIDE the label).

As for the flowers, I did the same as at my mother's funeral. The staff had told me that the deer would come and eat them, being very selective as to which flowers they liked. Well, my godmother had had a running battle with deer in her garden and I didn't see why they should win at the last, so I pulled out flowers from the big beautiful spray to make posies for the people who came (very few) and took the rest home. (They told me that it depended on which flowers were used; if the wreath spelled out a word like 'Mum', sometimes the deer would eat everything except 'Mum', sometimes they would only eat the word 'Mum'. Disconcerting.)

I spent the afternoon deconstructing the Christmas wreath (my word, that had been made to withstand a tempest!) and used the flowers for a table decoration, and a vase, and a spring wreath for beside the door.

  
A picture of the Spring Wreath will have to wait until morning. It's dark and drizzly and cold out there now.

I also cleared out a kitchen drawer (It's on a list of houseworkly tasks called 'the January Cure'

Just as well - the base was about to give up the struggle.

Look how tidy the drawer is now, no really, it is MUCH tidier. All the mess is an organised mess.

Cat news; Leo has scratched the top of her head nearly raw, where I put the topical worming treatment. I was a bit horrified when I saw the way she was going at the patch, which explained all the fur lying around everywhere. I quickly washed her head with warm water; to my surprise she thoroughly approved of this and started purring, and hasn't been scratching anything like as much since. 

Tomorrow is a working day. I have packed my school bag with various books of music and will hope for the best. Seven piano pupils in the morning, a whole class full of guitar pupils in the afternoon, and another three or four piano pupils in the evening. I did the planning a while ago - maybe it will come to me as I go along... 

Monday 6th January - ticking the tasks off the list

So, today we accomplished a number of various more or less urgent errands;

The Urgent List

* Himself needed a hair cut - done

* I needed to sort out bits and pieces to do with the bank - done

* Pay for the funeral - done. I'm acting as the 'celebrant', so, today I learned that I will have to be the one who presses the buttons to start and stop the music. It's enough to make me want to bring in my own mp3 player - at least I know how to work it... 
I may bottle out of the curtain-closing button, unless it is a big clearly marked unmistakable effort. All the funerals I have been to have had someone lurking at the back just to work the sound system. 
Oh well. It's a small, intimate occasion. I'm only expecting nine or ten people in total. We'll manage somehow between us, just so long as it doesn't turn into an episode of 'Some Mother's Do Have Them'.  

* Take McCavity the cat to the vet - she had rather alarming symptoms yesterday concerning her back end, and what should and shouldn't be coming out of it. We got an appointment. 
The first suggestion is that maybe she's got worms (so we've wormed her - that was easy as it is drops-on-the-back-of-neck rather than pill-down-the-throat-down-the-throat-down-the-throat; I've never met a cat that can't manage to spit said pill back out half an hour later)
The second suggestion is that it could be a reaction to her arthritis medicine. She's lost a bit of weight, and so may have been receiving a drop or two too much jallop which could make quite a different. So, no more medicine for now.

* Write the 'Eulogy' -done
well, sort of done. First question - what is a eulogy? Ask the internet...

eulogy /ˈjuːlədʒi/  

Learn to pronounce

1. a speech or piece of writing that praises someone or something highly, especially a tribute to someone who has just died.
2. 
   
3. Second question - how long should a eulogy be? Ask the internet again...

   Generally, a eulogy should be around three to five minutes long and take no longer than ten minutes. As to how many words a eulogy should be, that may depend on how fast you deliver them. A funeral eulogy of between 500 and 1000 written words will take from around three and a half to seven and a half minutes to speak.

That's OK then - I've done about 850 words, but don't intend to say all of them.

* Liaise with other family members who are coming - there are only two, my Father, and my Brother. I've emailed the paperwork eg eulogy, and notes on asking which buttons to press to music and curtains to start and stop to my Brother, because if we are delayed, he's going to have to do it all! 'Ah, right, I see...' I don't think he's done this before either.

The Less-Urgent List

I'm not sure what all was on this. 

Things like finishing off the 'Mindless Knitting for Christmas Time' shawl

 

And buying cloves to finish the clove orange 

And finding four books to take to Oxfam, because of receiving four books for Christmas

 

History of Science - mega-heavy paperback, why did we buy it, 20 years ago?, 

The Bookshop by Penelope Lively - a good read, not sure if I'll re-read, 

Death of a Village by M C Beaton - I enjoy her books, set in Plockton, mainly for the memory of the TV series, 

Amazing Uses for Ordinary Things - 1001 uses for Bicarb, or vinegar, or candle wax, and so on and so on... boring, 

In the Steps of St Paul by Morrow - I thought I'd want to re-read this, but haven't and now, 15 years later, I've changed my mind) 

This is a win - five books out!

I've also bought next year's Christmas Cards - how super organised

Finally, I cooked one of the recipes for January in my almanac - and it was very, very, good. Sausages, accompanied by lentils, cooked with onions and carrots and garlic pre-softened in butter, adding wine (I found the remains of some cider) and stock, and once they are cooked through, seasoning with lemon juice, salt and pepper. They were good. But then there are also carrots roasted with halved clementines, salt and pepper and fennel seeds... That was a supper to savour.

 

So far, so good. 

Sunday 22nd December - Advent 4 - mainly about food

To my surprise, I managed to get to church this morning. At ten to nine I changed my mind from 'sit and knit' to 'get up and go' and arrived in verse three of the first hymn (and I was not the last!)

That made an excellent start to the day. Himself stayed at home. going through the last eighteen months of my Godmother's bank statements to identify all the payments. Intense work, prbably made a lot easier by me being out of the house.

We had an early lunch of dill herrings ( we had two jars at the back of our fridge, bought for my godmother, who at one stage appeared to be living on rice-krispies, swedish dill herrings, gluten-free crispbreads, potatatos, apple puree and rice pudding - but not all at the same time). She'd gone off the herrings, so I kept them for ourselves and we ate one jar of them today, with non-gluten-free crispbreads, home-made coleslaw and salad. And very good too.

How early? Half past eleven, because of trekking to the next town to collect this turkey that I ordered a couple of weeks ago, not knowing that Waitrose and M and S would have their shelves SOLID with turkeys yesterday. As it happened, this was one of the slickest 'collect-the-turkey' exercises ever, and we were home again within a remarkably short time.

I spent the afternoon stocktaking in the kitchen. All the housekeeping has ground to a halt since Easter, when life became so complicated and full of alarms. The cupboards and freezer drawers no longer had any semblance of order and method and had just succumbed to madness.

Suffice it to say that the worms in the compost bin have never had it so good, assuming they enjoy a bountiful feast of out-of date cans and jars, well-past-their-best-before baking good and vegetables, and stuff out of the freezer. I have a list of jars and cans and packets approaching their end of life to use up, all stacked in order on the shelves, and a shopping list of replacement goods. Yes, I KNOW custard powder lasts for ever, but even 'for ever' comes to an end sometime.

Well, it is half past seven, and we have done what we wanted to for today. I've cooked a batch of sausage supper

and will put the spare portions in the freezer, and also a tray of  mincemeat surprise from my friend Laurie's blog.  The scone mixture is flavoured with mixed spice and orange zest, which is why there is a bald orange sitting beside the remaining 'surprises'.

They should have been allowed to cool, and then iced and garnished with dried cranberries, but I'm not sure they are going to last that long.

   

Thursday 31st October - Still in Europe

Still in Europe, but for how much longer? I don't even want to think about leaving. It has been such an ill-tempered, badly-thought-out, warped and distorted wrangle from start until - well, it's not finished yet.

Moving on, moving on...

If anyone comes trick or treating tonight I'm not sure what we'll be able to give them. I've eaten every scrap of chocolate, and we have no biscuits in the house. They can have a carrot - maybe that will help them see in the dark. I'm not a great Halloween fan, and I've never been trick or treating. Aha, I've just remembered - I think there may be some party blowers in the drawer left over from Christmas - just gone to check - yes. Good.

I've been at home all day. Luxury. Although I earned it by sending out invoices to the piano pupils. Then I discovered that I forgot that lessons at one school are meant to be £11 for twenty minutes, not £10. So I have diddled myself out of £25. I really can't be bothered - I made such a mess of last term's invoices that I'll live with the consequences.

The next big thing on the list is The Dreaded Tax Return. Ugh. One of the real pains is that my teaching year is September to July, and the tax year is April to April. I start a new register and folder and everything in September for the school year, and then have to wangle the information across two school years - which means two record books -  to get the figures. That's the bit I did this afternoon. I deserve chocolate.

Yesterday was a Major Achievement Day -  I stayed home then as well, and took on the kitchen floor. The kitchen isn't that big - I scuffled over it tile by tile, doing it pretty thoroughly, including the cupboard doors and the trolleys where the cats sleep and various things are stored.

But then, because I was working at floor level, I came nose to nose with the oven door. I like stained glass as a concept, and would love to have some panels in the house. But maybe not the oven door, even though it had become a pleasant caramel/brown colour, as in a good creme caramel desert topping. Unfortunately it is meant to be clear glass.

And here's some useful information; if you coat the surface of the glass with neat fairy liquid, and leave it to do its stuff, adding more from time to time, the fairies in the liquid will soften up all the grease and a moderately light effort with the nylon scourer will deal with it in a most satisfying way. Even the little hard lumps of brown-ness gave way eventually. See, see, lookee, lookee in the second picture above. Looks like newish.

The piano is looking very clean and dusted - that's because the piano tuner came yesterday morning. However the dining room table has reverted to its usual state of overloaded chaos. Hey ho. We should up-size; down-sizing is never going to work for us.

The triffid grows apace;

That picture is from yesterday afternoon. It was warm enough, just, for me to sit outside in the sun for half an hour with a cup of coffee;

   but I chose the chair that was further away from the triffid, just in case....

And now for 'show-and-tell'

I am immensely proud of having completed six hats for the 'Shoeboxes-for-Roumania' appeal; we will be packing them at church on Sunday.

These are crochet - I learned how to make them from youtube, and even how to start with a magic circle - whoop whoop. Our Canadian friends may notice the similarity between the smallest hat, on top of the pile, and a tea cosy in their possession...



These are knitted. I switched to crochet after making these, as sewing up knitting is not a favourite activity, and knitting them completely in the round brings other challenges when you start decreasing the stitches.

However, that's four lots of odds and ends of yarn used up, gone, removed from the house. Hooray and worth the effort.