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.   

Wednesday 12th October

 Hello! It is October - half way through October!

What happens is I forget to blog for a few days, and then there is so much to say that it all seems like too much, so I don't post anything, which doesn't really improve the situation. Ah well. I'm here now.

This is a the ruins of Nymans - a favourite National Trust place for us. We were there on Thursday; a lovely, bright sunny morning. You can go inside the ruins - there is a whole house in there, concealed behind the original walls. We didn't go in this time, though; I'm still 'not going in' (as opposed to 'not going out' - where does that phrase come from?). When I do go round, I always look out for the old television set, placed inside a puppet theatre, so that the curtains can be decently drawn across the the blank screen when it was not in use. Harking back to a time when television was regarded as rather 'modern', and 'not quite the thing for cultured people' no doubt.  

I was rather miffed to discover that I had missed the start of Inktober. Then I realised, of course, that I have been doing a drawing a day since April this year so Inktober wasn't so relevant to me this year.

At the moment I am knitting woolly hats to go into the Shoeboxes for Roumania collection that our church does every year. I've knitted two of these adult sized stripy patterned hats now and am part way through a slightly smaller one in a thicker yarn. I don't know how many more I will get finished before packing day on 6th November. 

The basic pattern is so easy, called 'simple is best', free from lovecrafts.com. It is just all in knit stitch, on a circular needle until you switch to dpns for the last rows of decreases. 

You might be a bit mystified by the 'her time has come' comment at the top of the drawing. There is a sketch to accompany it, but I didn't want to post it; it refers to one of our two cats, Leo (we thought she was male when we named her). We had to take her to the vet on Thursday 29th September; over a couple of days it became clear that her joints were giving her considerable pain, and she was very unsteady on her legs. It was a snap decision (although we had seen it coming for several weeks) that morning. This is how she was spending most of her days for the last month;   

Of course we (and the remaining cat) miss her, but I don't miss watching her moving around so stiffly and cautiously.

Lots of other stuff has happened over the month, fun stuff like meeting up with the 'children' at our favourite farm shop cafe for breakfast last week, and less fun stuff like having the latest Covid Booster - my word, this one is a bit of a shock after the previous versions. Bu we were more or less recovered after a day or so.

I hope you all managed to watch the Young Musician of the Year instrumental and concerto finals; I expect you can find them on BBC4 catchup/iplayer whatever. Well worth it. The pianists would have made this look and sound easy...

My Grade 8 student and I are both 'working towards' rather than 'at the expected level' - to use edu-speak trying to persuade 20 notes in the RH flow seamlessly against 6 in the LH. Brain-bending stuff.

From Chopin's Nocturne in Bflat minor. I seem to remember it featured in a Lewis (or was it Morse?) programme about a girls school being apparently haunted by a murderous ghost...

 Here's Rubenstein's performance - beautiful.

Saturday 13th August - Ooo err, What happened there?

 I have just deleted yesterday's post as the formatting for the blog seemed to have gone crazy, and somehow yesterday's post and the day before's were somehow overwritten on top of each other.

Deleting yesterday seems to have solved the problem.

But time and tide wait for no man, and you will never find out about yesterday...

I woke up at 4am this morning, and crept down stairs and out into the back garden without switching on any lights to try and save my night vision.

Luckily the full moon was still just to the side of the house, but it was still pretty light, light enough to see the flowers in the border. After a while more stars became visible as I became accustomed to the darkness, and eventually I SAW A SHOOTING STAR, a single bright silver-white streak across the sky!

That was the only one; I didn’t stay out long because star gazing is jolly hard on the neck muscles. I expect I could have spent longer outside if I had brought a blanket out to be able to lie down, but neither the hard paving nor the prickly dry grass seemed like comfortable options. I wonder if you can buy specially designed star-gazing camp chairs? Probably one of those loungers that capsize when you try and get out of them would be a possibility.

I have had this as an ear-worm for several days now; but a lovely ear-worm all the same. 'Moon and stars' is the bit that has got stuck, like a needle on a record.

 Today is another day of seeking out cooler spots. One cat is almost invisible at the back of a flowerbed close to the house; her fur is exactly the same colour as the earth. The other laboriously oscillates between ‘her chair’ and the floor by the piano. The current afternoon spot for humans is outside in the shade where a breeze comes around the corner of the house, not too far from the fridge.

Thursday 28th July - Walk-free step counting continues

Well, that was a pleasant surprise - studying a Schubert Impromptu (Aflat, op 109);

Notes written on a copy of the first page to send
to the student after the lesson 

and then teaching it added an impressive 600 steps to my daily count. I have set a very modest target of a mere 1750 steps, partly because I am so lazy, and partly because I like to succeed and get the little 'flying feet' cartoon when I reach my target, but on a 'slow' day I wasn't even reaching that. So piano practise has suddenly become a more welcome activity. As I am only at 400 steps (just after lunchtime) I think I will sit down at the piano and do some more work after I have finished this blog post (typing does not affect my step count, I find).

The consultant said he would like me to reach 10,000 steps a day; I gave him a hard stare and he suggested maybe 5000 to start with. That's over 2 miles, which would take me heading for 3 hours to do in one go. Some days I walk so slowly that I am in danger of falling over, especially if I'm on a footpath rather than a pavement!

Of course, playing the piano should be a pleasure - and I am coming back to that mindset after years of doing so much teaching that the last thing I wanted to do to relax was play some more. I have just a scant dozen pupils now; two or three in a day, several days a week, instead of maybe as many as 60 per week at one point, plus some class teaching as well. How did I do it?

Piano playing will be even more of a pleasure in ten day's time when the piano tuner has worked his magic. I am lucky in that my piano has always kept in tune in spite of a seemingly endless procession of students. But it has recently become well beyond bearing - after nearly three years, it has to be said. I don't think Mr L has visited since 2019.

Drawings; another four completed;

Monday - tomatoes

Tuesday - I was sitting in the car park waiting for Himself to be signed off after his cataract ops last month. We went together in case I had to drive him back, but in the event they did not need to put those drops into his eyes, and he appeared looking extremely happy with the outcome. Meanwhile I enjoyed the view; wild flowers, butterflies, and then, joy of joys, a steam train! I missed it when it was 'going there', and moved my chair to the top of the embankment as I reckoned it would be coming 'back again' fairly soon.

I really enjoyed listening to the engine - the simple chuffer chuffer pattern becoming infilled with more complex sound patterns as the train drew near, which faded as it continued out of sight. 

The Gershwin Rhapsody takes some of its rhythms from steam trains.  I also read somewhere that he hadn't quite finished composing the piano part so improvised a chunk of it during the premiere. Have a listen - this is Leonard Bernstein performing and conducting (only 17 mins long). It is also worth reading the comments.

Also,

I see I miss remembered the lyrics, after all these years...

Well, you must know all about the pointy ends on my tomatoes by now. I nipped the ends off and roasted them with a little olive oil to accompany out breaded sole at lunch time. I can see there are another bowlful ready to pick - I'm glad I only have four small plants!

Yesterday, Thursday, Himself put in an energetic hour collecting up all the fallen apples and other debris from under the apple tree. 

Time has flown by, and I must get on and do something useful now! 

  

Wednesday 16th March - not twiglets

 I had one of the last bread rolls, cut into cubes and toasted into  crunchy croutons and spread with marmite as my 'little snackeral' this morning. They tasted just like twiglets! 

I had the 'every so often catch up' blood tests done last week, and there weren't any real surprises except for low folic acid. So they've sent me a prescription, but I remembered from years and years ago that marmite is a good source of vitamin B so bought some in the last shopping order to have on toast.

I didn't spread butter on the croutons so that made it more or less zero fat - but I suppose all that salt will be bad for me in some other way. 

Noah's Ark; two days again;

yesterday; Storks "Even the stork in the sky knows her appointed seasons, and the dove, the swift and the thrush observe the time of their migration." Jeremiah 8;7

today; Mountain goats "Do you know when the mountain goats give birth?" Job 39;1-2

Wild, or mountain goats reminded me of  'Wild Asses' from 'Carnival of the Animals'  I learned the hard way never to play this to the children unless they were calm, sitting in their own space and completely forbidden to get up and dance. 

'Now, children', (in my best Joyce Grenfell voice), 'I would like you to let your hands move with the music, but you MUST stay sitting down and you may NOT make any noise.' 

I adopted this kill-joy approach after one disaster lesson when 30 small children completely lost the plot one wild, wet, and windy day. I was lucky to get away without having to dial 999, or, even worse, call the head.

This version of it shows the score.... do you suppose the pianists play the whole lot in one breath?

This is the BACK of my current piece of embroidery - there's still a lot more to do, some green, some grey, some black... but I'm just so pleased about how tidy this looks. So far. It won't last! I've learned how to start off without leaving any knots. I'll post the completed picture sometime next week, hopefully.

The variegated threads are all that could have hoped for.

Yesterday was so ,lovely and sunny that we got out into the garden and cleared the winter detritus of leaves, weeds, and general scruffiness from the front of the house, pulling up more goose grass along the way. I mulled over sowing lettuce and radish and planting seed potatoes, but decided against. 'Tomorrow is another day'

Tomorrow yesterday is today, today, if you follow; In the morning the sky was dusty yellow from Saharan sand to begin with, and the temperature had dropped to that seeping cold that penetrates through to the skin. I expect the sand is now coating the car and everything else after half a day of determined, persistent rain. 'Tomorrow is another day?'  

Tuesday 10th August - The first adventure -

 There are a whole series of 'adventures' approaching - overdue eye tests, overdue face-to-face clinic appointments locally and up in London; it seems I was premature when I rejoiced at all my appointments being via zoom. I have bought a couple of packets of those extra-protective face masks that make you look like a close relative of a duck-billed-platypus in readiness.

We wore ordinary masks for this afternoon's adventure - taking the cats to the vet. It was a mixture of annual check up (overdue by a year) and also see if we were running into trouble with McCavity's teeth. Leo had to have 6 teeth out in the Summer of 2019...

The system is that you have a chat with the vet standing outside the surgery, hand over the cat basket, wait outside, and then they reappear with the cats and the bill. Here we all are, waiting for dogs and cats and whatever... good job it was sunny...

In our case the consultation was 'relatively' cheap; 

there isn't much point vaccinating them at their age if they are not going into a cattery or living in a cat-infested environment, 

their teeth have a build up of plaque but the gums aren't inflamed - yet - and at their age doing the dental work would be a bit of a risk, and also there's more than a chance that they won't live long enough (they are 19 years old) for the plaque to become a problem

they don't seem to have any suspicious lumps and bumps that can be felt.

They are a bit thin and light-weight - but that's to be expected.

So, the first 'adventure' is complete. Apart from having a bit of difficulty in cramming both cats into the one container 'Leo is a bit grumpy, isn't she' they remarked, handing them back it was all a non-event. For us, maybe not so much for the cats.

In other 'news' - there isn't any news from here really - I have managed to persuade my 'Tea for Two' coffee and tea maker to burst into life after a few false starts when I couldn't remember exactly where the water goes.

This all happened because my bedside light started flickering. Everything is plugged into an extension strip under my side of the bed, so great dismantlings had to happen at about 10pm in order to get at the plug which is also a transformer. The pillows have to be removed, the mattress lifted over the foot of the bed, and muscle-wrenching contortions attempted in order to unplug the now HOT power pack. Then everything put back before we can actually go to sleep.

I'm keeping myself sane by playing Bach, and copying youtube watercolour tutorials into my teeny tiny book

Tuesday 27th July - Nearly everything on the list...

 I'm back to playing my Roland digital harpsichord again - it's probably been gathering dust for nearly a year, but what with one thing and another I haven't been playing the piano or anything much. Until I drastically cut down on the teaching back in March last year, I was hardly doing any playing in the evenings and weekends, although I usually did a ' piano project' over the Summer holidays.

this isn't me!

This Summer's project is to try and play some Bach - starting with the Partita in B flat and the Goldberg Variations. I'm not aiming for any great mastery of the Variations - but if I manage get hack my way through each one I shall be very pleased. I'm making more of an effort with the Partita. 

The drawing book - 'Learn to Draw in 30 Days or Less' - continues to astonish me! The last two lessons were on single point perspective - not something I've ever bothered too much about before.

Yesterday's was on how to draw a room;

and today's was drawing a street;

I'm up to lesson 23. Tomorrow I tackle 2-point perspective....

I just follow the instructions, and out pops a picture - how does that work?

Also  a painting - I saw some leaves against an evening sky for just a couple of second on television the other evening, so I did the background one day, the leaves the next, and today added some lines using a pen that has brown sparkly ink.

 The sparkles don't show up much...

The two knitted pot-holders went through the washing machine at 40 degrees as instructed at the end of the knitting pattern, and came out completely felted. The larger one is using the pattern, but I suspect that somewhere along the way things went astray because it is meant to be flat. I made a simplified version for the smaller one. They do look amazing - I shall make some more!

Finally, I am gradually typing up poems written by my grandmother when she was young - they are from around 1910 - 1920. The idea is to collect them into a booklet so that anyone in the family who is interested can have them. (I knew there was some purpose to learning to type at the beginning of this year!). There is a whole box full of her poems, memories, talks to the Mothers Union, stories...

At the moment I am working through an envelope labelled 'Youthful Poems'. At first I found the writing quite tricky, but I am beginning to 'get my eye in'.

Nearly everything on the list, I said - no hoovering, cleaning, tidying, you notice...

Wednesday 21st July 2021 - Taking a line for a walk

 

Paul Klee Quotes;. 

A drawing is simply a line going for a walk.

A line is a dot that went for a walk.

Battle - Gefecht
https://www.bowdoin.edu/art-museum/news/2019/object-of-the-month-gefecht-battle-by-paul-klee.html

Here's a snap-shot of the opening sequence of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue from the film Fantasia 2000. The cartoonist obviously felt the same about music; 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ie-TS-BitnQ

and so do I, which was why I was so pleased to see this. I love the piece, but I don't care so much for the rest of the cartoon. I have heard that Gershwin hadn't finished composing the piano part on the opening night, so made up quite a lot of it...

Knitting feels a bit the same; taking the end of a ball of wool for a walk

This is going to be a pot-holder, according to the pattern instructions and the picture. The fuschia tail is where I cast on, and then by some kind of alchemy and incantation I seem to be creating a square spiral. I'm now knitting the last couple of squares so that there will be nine in all, and then I need to wash it violently in hot soap water to make it all felt up into a felted up square. We shall see. Here's the picture on the (free!) pattern.

I have had three goes at doing the spiral one, but haven't managed to get past the fourth row yet. 

I spent this afternoon immersing myself in you-tube tutorials to sew your own tee-shirt, using a favourite old one as a pattern. You place your favourite tee-shirt, folded lengthwise, and take your pencil for a walk around the outside. Seems simple enough... and then you have to consider the stretchy neck band, and how to sew stretchy fabrics with a very basic sewing machine, 

I think I've absorbed most of the instructions, top tips, do's and don't's, one-directional and two-directional stretch etc... so maybe tomorrow I will take a pair of scissors to the skirt I bout about ten years ago but have hardly ever worn.

I want to let all the information settle before I start, so I went and took the hose for a walk, watering the garden after another baking hot day. 

Tuesday 9th February - morning - Snow!

 After Sunday's rather disappointing effort, snow started happening again on Monday morning and has continued since, falling in small, fine dusty flake which slowly accumulate. Yesterday  there was a decent dusting of snow on the grass; today the tips of the grass are just poking through the snow like Mrs Tiggywinkle's prickles showing through her cap;

A friend told me that her children had been sledging on the local hill on Sunday. They returned home completely coated in mud. I don't think there had been anything like enough snow, but it might be better this afternoon. 

James-the-garden-expert came round on Monday morning to finish the work he started last Monday (and also retrieve his hat which he had left behind). He has covered all the long flower border, and most of my larger patio pots with a layer of rich topsoil. It was steaming and smelling faintly of farm manure as he transferred it from barrow to flowerbed! But the weather is so cold that the snow was soon able to form a new layer on top. The smell seemed to disappear quickly as well - thank heavens!

.......

A pleasant surprise yesterday was that when I opened the Kindle app on my tablet the 'print' was black on white. Now, why should that be a surprise? Because for the last few days it has appeared as pale blue, almost invisible against the white background. Very weird. It was possible to reset it by changing the colour of the 'paper' to cream or sepia or whatever, whereupon the letters would turn black, and when one reset it to 'white' paper the letters stayed black. 

.........

Another pleasant surprise is that we actually have a delivery date for the printer we ordered on Boxing Day when our old printer printed its last ever sheet of paper. Or part sheet, as it happened. It has been a bit of a saga; we think it is because we took the option of an offer on extra ink, which probably doubled the number of customs declarations and other paperworky stuff post-Brexit. A bit like the problems that a cheese supplier is having with exporting mixed selection boxes of cheese to the EU, needing a complete and separate set of paperwork for each of the cheeses in every box.

Now we are waiting to see if we will have to pay tax or admin charges before we can have the delivery... and although the delivery date is tomorrow, or was that today? we are not placing any great expectations on seeing it so soon. Especially as it has been sitting over in the East of England, where most of the snow has fallen.

Meanwhile I continue to teach piano using my telephone to read the music - reading the music two bars at a time and scrolling from side to side and up and down. Yesterday I used the tablet to read some music, sent to me by a pupil who is using a book that I don't have. I propped the tablet on the music rest and hoped it would not slip and chop my fingers off on its way to the floor. There comes a point when tech cannot conveniently replace paper and pencil... 

  

Wednesday 18th November - Keep Going

 

My grandmother, I think it was, used to sing 'Keep right on to the end of the road' but I couldn't remember any more of the song. Here it is on YouTube with Harry Lauder.

It is exactly the sort of song one associates with Patriotism and World War 1. Anyway, this is the phrase that inspired today's word, after slogging round the block today. Maybe it would have been easier if I hadn't already finished off the windows that I cleaned yesterday (there's always a smear or two left) and done my stretchy exercises, and quickly dealt with a couple of emails... and if there hadn't been such a strong headwind snatching my breath away...

Anyway, I did 'Keep right on to the end of the road', in this case, until we were back at the gate again, and felt all the better for it as I knew I would.

Most of this year has felt a bit like the song...

In other news I have been making lino print labels for the mincemeat that I intend to give away;

I would have liked the heart to be a little bigger, but, you know, one moment's inattention... good job I'm not a brain surgeon is all I can say. 

I should have been writing up yesterday's piano lessons but... h well. I have just now caught up with yesterday's lessons and all but one of  today's lessons Some of the time that should have been spent writing up was used in rearranging EVERYTHING around the piano, so that I can have  tablet and the laptop involved in the zoom; tablet on top of the piano for facing into, and laptop to one side with the whole of the keyboard in shot. This is to try and save my neck muscles; I can't get all the keyboard AND my face into the zoom screen, and so I have and achy neck from sitting in a peculiar scrunched up way to bring my head down into the shot.

I do have three zooms a week that last over the '40 mins for free' limit (I'm too much of a scrooge to subscribe) so will have to cope with the weird head position for those, but at least the other 9 zooms will be more comfortable!

The Christmas cactus has been renamed Advent Cactus - it's even a bit early for that.

 

    

 

Thursday 24th September - Hello Thursday, my old friend

 I keep meaning to order myself this album

it takes me straight back to university days, playing the cassette that I had over and over again, radio-cassette player jammed between my pillow and the wall as I tried to get to sleep at night. The student in the adjacent room liked his music on loud, and the thump of the bass kept me awake, so I drowned him out with Simon and Garfunkel. It sort of worked - the thunk click of the auto reverse mechanism would jolt me out of my sleep, but not enough to wake properly.

Yesterday and today have been darker days; the summer sunshine has been interspersed with rain, giving the days an altogether gloomier feel.

Although yesterday was brightened up by cards and a pot of michaelmas daisies for our wedding anniversary

Still, I have an outing planned for later today - oh yay - but only to get my flu jab. So added to the complication of how warmly do I need to dress for the day is also factoring access to my upper arm for the nurse's needle. (In the end I chose short-sleeve shirt and warm sweater. And trousers, of course. No need for sniggers.)

Yesterday might have been a duller day, weatherwise, but I finished the crochet blanket that I started in April 2019

I walked into a wool shop in Havant, and was so bowled over by the vitatlity of colour in this yarn, that in the end I bought one of each colourway. I made a granny square from each ball - they accompanied me on our endless treks too and from my godmother in hospital or her house all through the year. When lokdown started I bought some plain blue and bordered each square, and yesterday I finished - every square bordered, all joined up, outside border and all the ends sewn in.  Now what? I do have two more blankets - lap-rugs, really, on the go...  

A book I ordered about the mathematicians and scientists involved in quantam physics has arrived today, a blend of science fact and literary fiction. I bought on the strength of the reviews. I can understand why it got the reviews - the writing is compelling and I keep on reading, but the subject matter is graphic and vivid and fills my head with images that I don't want to see - we are nowhere near quantam physics yet - but it seems that the history of the development of the pigment 'Prussian Blue' interconnects with the holocaust and I'm feeling unsteadied by this because I use that colour all the time. I've set the book aside - I need time to think about it before I read any more. Or don't read any more. 

The list of books waiting to read, and part-read, keeps on growing. At the moment I am partway through

The Man who was Thursday - G K Chesterton

Christ stopped at Eboli - Carlo Levi

The Little World of Don Camillo - Giovanni Guareschi

I Saw Two Englands - H V Morton

On Chapel Sands - Laura Cummings

Understanding the Crucifixion - Fleming Rutledge

Short Stories - In A Gernam Pension, In the Garden - Katherine Mansfield

which is utterly ridiculous. My friend said she was in the same situation and told me she 'had to put a stop to that'. I think I will too.

I am behind on my paintings - I'll get on and do one later today.

Thursday 17th September - I was listening to a radio interview with David Cameron, and there were stills of the interviewer and DC on the screen of my tablet. I was mainly listening for the bit where DC said that he said he got rid of Dominic Cummings twice but he kept coming back.

I went over them with ink later to see what would happen

On twitter I saw this photograph, titled 'My Dad, the stonemason, sharing his lunch with a sparrow'

It was raining yesterday - I listened to Debussy's 'Jardins sous le pluis' while I painted this

Which I quite liked, but I had always intended to go over it once the paint was dry, and I like the drawn on version better.

Hey ho, nonny nonny no,

the rain it raineth every day...

well, no, actually. But it seems like it at the moment... cup of tea always makes things better!

  

         

Saturday 14th December - It's all gone quiet

Today I have.....

Taught eight children at the Music Centre - mostly carols, but a scale or arpeggio found its way into several lessons, a sneaky bit of sight reading ('I bet you a biscuit you can manage Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer') and even keyboard harmony; working out chords and improvising a tune. So I think that qualified as proper teaching.

Home; knitted some rows of the 'mindless wrap'  project I'm using 600 yards of aran, or worsted weight yarn, and 5mm needles; cast on 5 stitches, knit three rows, then, evey row is slip 1, knit 1, yfwd, knit to end of row.
What seems to happen is that the rows increase in length by one stitch every time (that's the yarn forward) and a series of eyelets appear at each side (also because of the yarn forward).
Stop before you run out of yarn and bind off loosely. I'm hoping to create a whole row of eyelets along the top two rows before casting off, by doing a row of slip 1, k1, [k2tog yfwd] until last 2 stitches, k2. Then I'll knit  2 more rows and cast off  That's going to need a few sums, and weighings of how much yarn it takes to knit a whole row to work put when the end is nigh. Somewhere around 300 stitches per row, by that time. This pattern is sort of based on one I saw elsewhere. The good thing is that I only need to concentrate at the beginning of each row

I have also done a massive tidy up of heaps of stuff lying everywhere, filled the recycling tub in the kitchen with no-longer-required paper including endless copies of easi-play Jingles Bells and Away in a Manger and even Put Things Away. In cupboards, not mangers.

So I feel entitled to sit with a tea tray and relax.

I fear I am becoming like my mother; she warned me that would happen. I find like a tray cloth on my tray these days. I hit upon the idea of cutting a leftover scrap of fleece to fit - perfect; it's non-slip, heat proof, dries in an instant and goes through the washing machine. 

Next on the list will have to be Christmas Cards. I have written and posted 2. Two. Once I have finished blogging, I will switch on the music - I brought back the magnificent Music Player  from my god-mother's house on Thursday, and have filled the USB stick with Christmas music - and see if I can get a couple more written.

Himself has done an amazing job getting the Christmas Lights strung round the sitting room. 

You might just be able to make out the knitted Christmas trees on parade along the mantelpiece. 

I hear sizzling - he's cooking supper...

Thursday 21st November - easy-peasy music players

I've just splashed out £60 or so on the cutest music player...



How big is it? I suppose if you taped three telephone handsets together - landline ones - that might be about it.

You load mp3 files onto a usb memory stick, put it in the slot on top (that gives a clue to the size) and then turn it on with the big yellow button on the front.

The plan is to give it to my godmother as an early Christmas/late Birthday present, with favourite tracks (Bruch violin concerto for starters) already loaded.

It might work - I have about 60% confidence in her being able to

remember what it is
remember to TURN the button, not PRESS the button for on
remember to keep turning the button to raise the volume

If she doesn't like it, I'm going to have it back!

There are some amazing mp3 players designed for 'seniors'.

How about this one; you literally lift the lid, where it says, to start, and press the black button to skip forwards and close the lid to stop it. The volume controls are concealed in the base - you have to poke them with a pencil to set them.
  


I suspect that the music player will be too late for her to operate, but we can but try.