Sunday 25th June - while the sun shines.

I got out the paints for first time in ages this morning; I wanted to have a go at painting a picture of a wild flower hay meadow. I'm still hunting for the video of a tradional meadow being harvested, but can't track it down at the moment. It's a longish process; cutting it one day, raking it into rows which need to be spread and turned every day for for several days to be sure of getting it dry enough to then bale and stack. It involves time, labour, and anxious weather watching as you need four or five consecutive dry days or everything is ruined.

It's not surprising that silage became so popular; cutting and baling all in one go...

Make hay while the sun shines, they say, with good reason.

However I need to plan doing cross stitching BEFORE the sun shines into my sewing space. I managed to complete the large central motif as the sun was beginning to make bright stripes across my desk. Just the bottom border to go now.

Friday 3rd January - first day of my weekend

I don’t teach any piano kessons on Fridays anymore so my weekend starts on Friday now. Lovely. I persuaded myself to deal with various admin tasks in the morning, and spent the afternoon fiddling around with cross stitch designs. 

This is the picture I was thinking of doing, something I did in a diary;

The original is only about two inches tall, on a page in December 2019. A friend and I went for afternoon tea at an extremely posh hotel near us. We'd both had a pretty tough couple of months, so treating ourselves and having a long catch up was a good way to finish the year.

It was getting dark when we left, and I took a couple of pictures on my phone as we left;

to remind myself of the day, and these became the little painting. 

There's something about silhouetted trees against the inky shaded sky that I just love looking at.

A couple of hours has convinced me that I don't yet have the knowledge and experience to turn my paintings into a cross stitch grid. I'll adapt a kit this time around, and learn from that.

I shall turn my attention to 'Death in Paradise' on the TV and relax with some knitting instead.

Friday 6th January - Light at the end of the tunnel

This morning I had four ENORMOUS tasks that were overdue. This evening I have just one left.

(A round of applause at this point is appreciated, but not vital)

Task Number 1 was sorting out a delivery of supplies before I ran out in three weeks time. I had logged onto the website at the beginning of the week and had a chat with the chatbot... but heard nothing back. I rummaged through the email folders until I found an email address. The company emails seem to be headed CS which is not entirely helpful. 

(When I was working in about twelve different schools very week, emails from the various school offices all had just plain 'office' in the email address header - I don't know what its proper name is - and quite frequently were informing me of some change to the schedule, and signed 'Mary', so it was a bit of a gamble when it came to working out which school wanted me to cancel/rearrange/supply information. But I digress).

I had an automated reply from the website to let me know that they would deal with it in three working days. Whoah! That meant it might not get looked at until Tuesday next week! I reached for the phone and spoke to someone who sorted everything out, so I can sleep soundly again.

Task Number 2; Ang's postcard project landed on the front doormat yesterday. Which meant I really, REALLY needed to complete mine and post it, especially as we plan to finish on the 28th January, a year after we first started discussing it.

This will mine to keep. I need to design and stitch a project in the next three weeks. I can do that! I just have to choose quickly and stay focused. For some reason mine seems to have fewer pictures, but I think that is my fault for taking two months to do the address and the stamp, when Ang managed the address (under the notebook) and the stamp in the same month. 

What shall I do this time? Hmm. I have an idea slowly taking form.

I've done a photograph like this of Ang's piece, but won't post until tomorrow when she might have received hers. I hope it doesn't get delayed and give her problems meeting the 28th January due date.  

Task Number 3 was the January 'Print and Post' Newsletter. It is accomplished and up on the pages section. Christmas, can I blame it on Christmas? No, not really. But I did have problems clarifying some ideas, and sourcing pictures. It is very hard to find pictures of 'things in flower in January' when you are writing in December. In then end I did my own.

Which means that I have also done some stuff in my sketch book today. Now, if I mange to do a duolingo lesson, 1000 steps on the spot to hit my daily step target of 2023, the 5 minutes 'stretch and mobilise' balletbasedmovement session for Friday, the '5 mins deep breathing' for the Zoe app habit tracker, knit a few rounds of my sock, and also play the piano for a bit, all before bedtime (it is only a quarter past 5, after all) I will have hit every target today and only have one outstanding task for tomorrow, which is to write detailed notes on a student's Scarlatti piano sonata recording that she sent me before Christmas.

Did you keep a count? That's 6 possible things to do before bedtime.

 

          

Wednesday 4th January - Back on track (datewise)

It has been Wednesday all day in my mind. 

This may be because a regular Wednesday morning term-time piano teaching zoom has restarted. By prior agreement we didn't do much in the way of piano, but just had a lovely long chat. This zoom is alway an unequal mix of chat and piano lesson as we spend about an hour setting ourselves and the rest of the world to rights before getting round to the piano bit; no wonder lessons have always taken up most of a morning ever since we started!

I'm trying to restart a sketchbook habit. It went quite well a few years ago, but fell by the wayside last year. I've bought a Special New Notebook for the purpose (I don’t need much excuse to buy another notebook). This is the front page:

The top is a watercolor version of the inky pictures I did a few days ago, to which I added some black fountain pen lines. Then I drew some simplified ideas for trees fir me to think about, inspired by a blog post on stitchinglife.uk about a Paul Klee-inspired embroidered sketchbook cover.

Starting a New Sketchbook is always a little intimidating...

Ang and I have resumed our correspondence regarding the sequel to the Postcard Project. We are approaching the end; just a month or so to go, and we both want to continue. 

Wednesday 31st August - Last day of the Summer holidays

Well, not for me. The schools go back tomorrow, but I'm not planning to get going with the full teaching schedule until Monday 12th September. There's too much shuffling of timetables and changing of lesson dates to be wrangled before then, as the students change schools, clubs and classes.

It has been feeling quite Autumnal the last few evenings and mornings, and there's definitely a change in the weather, even though it is still warm and sunny.

A seed catalogue arrived in the post and I have spent several mornings perusing the pictures, and adding page markers... I have a fancy to grow cauliflowers in pots - it seems you can only fit one plant into a 12 inch pot though. Maybe if I buy the dwarf variety?

This is last week's Johanna Basford picture in the last year's journal, all in French, that I bought so cheaply. I decided NOT to use green, and I've come to the conclusion that I am missing a touch of green here or there. I'm not a great butterflies and fairies person, but it was a useful experiment.

I've at last decided what to record - books, as I start and finish them, with maybe a comment. Or maybe not.

I've also made a start on this week's picture. I found about five leaves I had missed after I took the photograph. The picture might be on its side. Or it might not. It is certainly an education seeing how she manages to ring the changes for designs in order to provide 52 different pictures.

Drawings - I've got a bit further on with August's picture since I drew this, but it is still not ready to post Ang posted her card a few days ago, but it hasn't arrived yet. The Postal strike and Bank Holiday weekend does not make for a speedy service!

Do you want a clue for this month's embroidery picture from me? Oh, alright. I've just bought this on Kindle; I suspect I have (as usual) let myself in for more than I bargained for, but will muddle on through.

I didn't do any stitching at all on the postcard on Sunday, as we went round to our next door neighbour's for an hour or so in the afternoon, and after wine and crisps I thought I'd better not pick up a needle!

That's meant to be one of our cats, Leo. She drags her ancient body up the stairs most mornings to spend ten minutes or so with me. Highly inconvenient if I have just decided to get up, because I hate to disappoint her after she has made such an effort. So I go back to bed and read my book for a little while... and another chapter.... and to find out what happened next.....

and before I know it, another half hour or so has disappeared.

I'm managing to hit my daily step target of 2750 steps, sometimes even getting more than 3000. However, there are uncertainties in the gadget's discrimination between activities. I now take it off when I practice the piano, (and then get very annoyed if I forget to put it back on). Today I gained about 100 steps just changing all the pillowcases on our bed - 12 pillowcases in all, three 'top' pillowcases and three 'under' pillowcases, and we both have three pillows; two for sleeping on and another for sitting up in bed reading. Then there were a number of pillows in the two other bedrooms so I stripped them off too. I am forever trying to match up pillowcases, sheets and duvet covers in colour-coordinated sets, but continually thwarted. I reckon in a few washes' time I might have nailed it. 

Tuesday 30th August 2022 - too much for one post?

There's been a bit of a gap - and I find once a gap in something has happened it gets increasingly hard to restart.

What have I been doing for a week and a half?

The simplest way to try and recall everything is maybe to post all the pictures I have taken since the last post on 18th August;

Which I have just done, and then deleted anything which was in the nature of a reminder to myself about something or other, or relating to a piano lesson...

Ah, here we go, this was the Johanna Basford picture for week ending Sunday 21st August. I'm pleased with how it came out, but I still hadn't decided what to put in the diary spaces on the facing page. I have a diary on my computer, linked to the phone, and a paper journal-cum-diary, and also a page-a-day diary I write up in the evening.

Scibbly sketches; - one of the folksongs set by Benjamin Britten is 'Oliver Cromwell is buried and dead - hee, haw, buried and dead'. I've always loved this song, and the setting.

How Peter Pears can get the words out so quickly and clearly is a marvel.

We have developed a terrible mini-magnum habit. "Just the one," as Mrs Wembley always said in the sit com "On the up". I can barely remember anything about it except Joan Sims as the cook, Mrs Wembley.

There have been quite a few takers for the apples I have left out at the gate.

and there is a slight possibility of someone wanting djembe lessons, or wanting to be in a djembe group. There are significant problems in running a drumming group over zoom, namely the time lag between the different people on the zoom! I suspect that drumming in the garden would have to be severely limited too, for the sake of the neighbours.

Wednesday morning is always and event - our on-line grocery order arrives - what shall we actually get this week? We usually accept the substitutions unless they are truly bizarre. This tie a pizza was squashed, and we got to keep the pizza AND received a refund. There was always the memorable time our curry meal with rice for 2 turned out to be two packets of rice and no meat... 

I packaged up a couple of water brushes (where you fill the handle of the brush with water) for a friend to try, but she had gone ahead and bought them. Just as well, with the postal disruptions. They are so convenient.

My side of the dining room table;

His side of the same table. We are still managing to clear half of it in order to eat. It has saved considerably on the laundry, and one is far less likely to get spaghetti sauce all down one's shirt.

I should say I am far less likely to get spaghetti sauce all down my shirt.

This is something called Plum Shrub. The jar is two-thirds filled with halved and stoned plums (you add the stones as well), then one third filled with sugar, the zest of a lemon also goes in (I now have an odd-looking bald lemon in the fridge...) and then you fill to the brim with rum. Seal tightly - I've added tape as the lids leaked - and keep in a cool dark place until Christmas if you started it in August. Then you can strain and use the liquid as a mixer or a liqueur to drink, and eat the plums. 

I have never made this before, so you can follow this recipe at your own risk. It comes from 'It's Raining Plums' - a collection of recipes from the Daily Telegraph, edited by Xanthe Clay. One of the cookery books I saved from my mother's hoard.

Perennial Kale. I might give this a go. The suppliers look most interesting and I shall have a browse around their website.

I've posted these pictures of seed packets here as I got sick of having them hanging over my guilty conscience. So the other day I emptied the contents over a couple of bare patches in various flower beds and will just see what happens next year. I put the picture here as I didn't know where else to put them, and the last thing I wanted was to have Empty seed packets cluttering up my life!

I reckon that's more than enough for now - we are up to Saturday 27th August. I must reassure Ang that I have started on the stitching for August (better late than never?) and will hurry it along...

Thursday 18th August - It rained! it rained!

 It rained enough that the grass is now green and brown, instead of yellow and grey, and no longer crunches underfoot! We have had a couple of days of relief from watering - very welcome, although we have continued to fill rows of buckets and garden tubs with 'grey water'.

Drawings;

There's quite a lot of catching up... 

Wednesday last week was when I did a sudden backwards roll when trying to crouch down to write 'MILK' on the up turned bucket, ready for the new milkman.

Tuesday's milk delivery, the first in the new schedule, was safely deposited under the bucket. Today's was just left on the door step. On Friday night we shall try and remember to leave the bucket on the doorstep where he will be able to find it. Although at 8am rather than 4 am when used to be delivered it should have been light enough to see it beside the door. 

I've started doing bits of water colouring again, just 'pits and pieces' as my godmother used to say. She was Finnish, and came over in the 1950s so her English was very good, but she still counted her stitches in Finnish, and remembered the Lord's Prayer from Sunday School in Finnish.

I started on my French 2021 planner, originally with pencil, but found it easier with a fine brush and watercolour. The paper is too absorbent for water colour really, but manageable. It's really for getting practice.

    

The spaghetti squash seedlings I gave to our neighbours produced two squashes. Their little boy, about 2, was convinced it was some kind of unsatisfactory ball. Too heavy to kick, and it didn't bounce at all well. They gave me the one that he hadn't been playing with.

My vines have also produced two squashes; the LH plant has leaned oved and laid its squash in the right hand tub, so the RH plant has dangled the squash over the side.

Tuesday it rained a little, like a sort of 'trial run'. We collected about an inch in each bucket - enough for just one half bucket in total!

Our cats have never seemed to mind being caught in the rain; they come in absolutely dripping and then demand to be dried off. Preferably while sitting on a lap.

I've never cooked a spaghetti marrow before, and went for the easiest recipe as it was hot and I was feeling bothered. I found a website with several different methods for cooking them, and chose the slow cooker one. The instructions were simple enough; pierce through the skin in a few places, put it in the slow cooker and leave it. 

• SLOW COOKER SPAGHETTI SQUASH

For this method, do not cut the squash in half and instead leave it whole.

With a small, sharp knife, poke several holes into the outside of the squash. These will allow steam to escape. Set the whole squash into a slow cooker. Add the lid and cook on HIGH for 3 to 4 hours or on LOW for 5 to 6 hours. Depending on the size of the squash, you may need more cooking time.

When the squash is done, allow to cool for about 5 minutes, and then cut in half. Run a fork through the flesh to separate the “spaghettilike” strands/noodles.

Yup - it worked, just as they said! I seasoned the 'spaghetti' with butter, salt and pepper and it was delicious. 

I came over all dizzy and faint at the beginning of the week, felt very unsteady and very unhappy about it. Then I had a brainwave; when living in Indonesia and Singapore in the 1970s I experienced the same thing several times, and the cure was to eat or drink something salty.

I'm a great fan of  this brand of vegetable stock, and quite often drink a teaspoon of the stock powder in a mug of hot water as a quick and easy alternative to tea or coffee if I want a hot drink. I therefore had a cup of bouillon in the morning several days running (I did feel as though I should be lying on a deck chair on a transatlantic liner, being served by a superior white-coated steward, but that part of the dream remained a dream).  

It seemed to do the trick, and I've been fine since, especially now it is cooler. 

I've finished last week's 'toadstools on a stump' picture, using watercolour pencils for the background.  I'm part way through this week's now; a wreath of flowers and leaves. 

  

Thursday 11th August - How are you doing?

 We. Are. Melting. 

I have opened every single door in the house, including the front door, in an effort to get some kind of air flow, but the breeze that comes through the house is roughly the same temperature as the blast that meets you when you open the oven door while cooking.

"Could you limit yourself to no more than half an hour on the computer?" he asked, "as I haven't got round to hoovering out all the fans yet."

At last, the desire to do watercolours has returned, after many, many months. It is a good job that I don't earn my living from painting pictures. All it took was idly scanning through youtube videos, and then one high-speed tutorial caught my attention, and I thought "I can do that!". And in time, I will be able to. I have re-labelled a part used book "Experiments and Mistakes", rather as I labelled my very first sketch book, and am beginning to use it.

Drawings;

Saturday 6th August

- I have forked out the princely sum of £10 for a set of six five-minute stretching sessions from www.balletbasedmovement.com. I strongly recommend them; here is one of their free videos

It is a delightful older mother / dance teacher daughter combination. She started teaching her mother ballet exercises because her mother had balance and foot strength issues, and many of the videos are free. 

Sunday 7th August - water saving continues. We now carry a couple of buckets of bath water downstairs to save for the garden and let the rest run down the plughole to prevent the drains from clogging.

Monday 8th August

We joined a large (about 40 people?) family lunch party, at the most gorgeous location about 90 minutes drive from us. It was a boiling hot day, but the venue had an elegant covered terrace in the shade, so it was perfect. We came late, in time for coffee, speeches and toasts (the occasion was a memorial lunch for my Aunt who dies in 2021), as I desperately wanted to be there, but also need to be so careful about avoiding catching Covid.

Tuesday 9th August - Oh thank heavens for the piano tuner, who worked his usual magic!

  Time's up - need to power down!

Sunday January 2nd - How long does it take to create a new habit?

In my case about 7 years, I think. Especially if it involves commitment and effort.

However I have managed to go out for a walk two days in a row. Not only that, but was persuaded to add a loop around the back of the pond near us... and was rewarded by the sight of a front garden full of early daffodils all in flower.

Stopping to stare at them was a welcome opportunity to pause and catch my breath before continuing on to the post box to post a couple of 'thank-you' letters to piano pupils.

In the grim mornings driving around in the half dark, watching out for the first green leaves (on the road leading up to Loxwood) or the first daffodils (at the corner where I used to divert down a tiny lane to take a short cut cross country towards Ardingly) was one of the pleasures of my old life as a peripatetic music teacher. The earliest primroses would suddenly appear on the sunny side of a steep bank further along the same tiny lane, and bluebells on a south-facing verge on the road to Petworth. Oh yes, I used to put the road miles in, back in those days, criss-crossing the county from East to West, North to South.

I used to think that the months of January and February were just two months of grey-ness, until I saw pictures of David Hockney exhibition some years ago - maybe this was it; 'The Arrival of Spring, Woldgate, Yorkshire' . You can click through the pictures at this link. I was disbelieving of the amount of colour he had used, until I started to look at the hedgerows more closely, and came to the conclusion that the colours were, indeed, all there, if not as bright.

I'm glad we got out this morning, because this afternoon closed in early with cold and rain and grey and early dusk. 

I have been reading the January chapter of 'Nature's Remedy' by Emma Mitchell. It is one of the few books which is actually better on Kindle, if you read it on a tablet, as the drawings and photographs are so vivid on a screen, and you can scroll in to examine the details. Inspired by this I went into the garden (yes, in the rain, no, I didn't put on a coat, yes, I did get wet) and pulled a few springs from the herb planters to draw and paint.

Knitting... 

This must be the third time I am attempting to knit mittens. Why? Because. The first time they were going to be too small. The second time they were going to be a bit big, which I was prepared to put up with, but I didn't like the way I had done some increases, and also I had mysteriously acquired rather more stitches than the pattern suggested. I had been using the pattern from my Birthday present book 'the Knitter's Companion', but found an even easier to follow pattern online. So far it seems to be going well. It is really a practice run for knitting a pair of socks. Here's a link to the pattern I am using. 

Hello 2022 - Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow

I've had those words as an earworm to several days now. Anyway, I wish you all a Happy New Year, and also"Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow", today and every day.

And, should you know the tune, I apologise for infecting you with the earworm. Although there are probably worse things to have running around in your head.

This time of year the sun rises more or less opposite our bedroom window. The view might not be wonderful - all roof lines, television aerials, street lights, telegraph poles and BT wires, but one can look past and through them to see the glorious skies;

I have not made new resolutions this year - although I will continue with the old ones of  'write a page in the daily diary every the evening' and 'eat chocolate at least once a week'. These are not so much resolutions and habits now. The other one of delivering two bags of 'stuff' to the charity shop every month is a bit tricky at the moment.

Somewhere I read about the 'Texas Sharpshooter', who fired his gun at the barn door, and then painted  targets on it, with the bullseyes centred on the bullet holes. That seems a promising approach to making guilt-free 'resolutions' for this year.

Oh help. I have just googled this on the source of all knowledge and discovered that is is a description of one of many fallacies that abound in statistical analysis... nothing is so likely to wake the sleeping tigers in our household as yet another example of misuse of statistics on the news. 

Anyway, where was I?

Oh yes, my bullet holes in the barn door are a series of soft and flexible suggestions for myself for January...

1. Taking up the Active Repertoire Challenge at www.pianodao.com, which is always to have a couple of pieces that one can perform anytime, anyplace, without music, and without anxiety. At the moment my 'go-to' pieces all date from my childhood, when I memorised everything I ever learned to play as a matter of course. I plan to resurrect something a bit 'meatier' than the Bach Minuet in G, and also learn something new which I will probably be teaching later this year anyway.

2. Sketching throughout January

This is an exercise from (one of the many) books I have acquired over the years. It is a place we visited about 4 years ago on a bleak Spring day quite near to where we live. The house is in a hollow quarried out of the side of the hill, and I took the photograph from a sort of treehouse built around the trunk of a huge beech tree near the top of the steep slope behind the house.

3. Walking (off and on) throughout January - a nominal notion of maybe reaching a total of ten miles by the end of the month sounds attainable.

4. Writing more letters and postcards, sending more emails to friends and relatives. Walking to the post box and back is about half a mile, which should help me along the way to covering ten miles.

Our nearest post-box has been decorated for Christmas!

Monday 29th November - The end of the day!

 At first I couldn't understand why I was feeling so 'done in' by the end of today. Then I thought back...

In the morning I sorted out some books for the charity shop, clearing about three feet of much needed shelf space upstairs in the bedroom. I've easily got that amount of books stacked all over the place downstairs, and it will be a relief to shelve them at last. That took an hour I suppose, by the time I had reorganised the other books as well.

Monday is the day I clean the bathroom. So I did that. 

Downstairs; yesterday we nipped outside just before going to bed to rescue my pelargoniums and cuttings from the garden after seeing how the temperatures were forecast to plunge overnight.

They needed sorting out today; no way could we keep them on the table forever and ever. This house is slowly silting up with stuff from the edges of the room towards the middle.

I snipped cuttings from the pelargoniums but couldn't plant them as the earth was so cold! So I have left them in water upstairs on the back bedroom windowsill, with the pots of earth nearby, and will plant them tomorrow. Everything else has gone into the cold frame in the garden.

I'm working on a picture for the Advent trail round the village which our church is organising. I ws meant to be drawing a wreath.

The day before yesterday I did all the black ink; 

Yesterday I tested how I would manage the sky and the stars, using blue ink and gold marker pens. I also had a go at putting in the other houses, but they went a bit blurry. Today I tried again when the background was properly dry (the church and house nearby)

Today I added the sky and the windows, and also painted the cave in the bottom left, where I shall put a silhouette of a Nativity scene. The pictures have to fit a 45cm square window pane, and be ready by Wednesday. Did I say this was meant to be a wreath? I'm not quite sure what happened there. I checked with the organiser this morning and luckily it doesn't seem to matter that I'm doing something different! 

I found the idea from scouring google - the original has no cave, but Father Christmas in his sleigh against the moon. Too tricky for me!

Then I taught two piano lessons to two tired year 7 children, who both spent from Friday to Sunday involved in swimming galas. They are both very tired and teaching them was quite hard - Next week will be the last lesson and I sincerely hope they will just play easy Christmas carols from now on! 

I shall now cast off the green scarf, even though there is still some yarn left. It is about 5 feet long which will do nicely.

That will do for today, I reckon. I shall do much less tomorrow, for sure!