Monday 4th April - Exercises and sewing and Windows 11

 This arrived in the post for me today;

My Medal! I started 'walking' the South Downs Way on Boxing Day last year, and completed the 100 miles last Saturday. Let's be honest here; it s a virtual walk, where you enter the distance in km, miles or steps and you can see the course of your travels plotted on a map. I've been aiming for a daily step count of 2000 by the end of each day - not much, but it has kept me active. If I do NOTHING but sit and red, sit and knit, sit and watch television, my step counter can be less than 500 by bedtime. So this has been a real incentive to walk those extra steps, usually 'on the spot' while watching television.

One side shows Beachy Head, and the other King Arthur's Round Table, which is at Winchester. The disc rotates, showing various landmarks along the route on the Beachy Head side, and the names of the Knights on the other.   

I'm going to try talking my ancient and reluctant relative (mentioning no names) through a short and simple set of chair exercises several times a week as part of my phone call - I phone most days. He used to go to a proper Chair Exercise class, but that stopped some time ago. He has become a bit wobbly, partly s a result of being unwell recently. I'm no trained fitness instructor, but I reckon this will do us both good; - everything to be done gently and easily without strain...

1. wriggle your toes, flex your ankles up and down a coupe of times, rotate them a couple of times clockwise and then anticlockwise.
2. raise your foot and lower legs up, and lower a coupe of times (do each let separately)
3. see if you can get your knees to touch the underside if your table in turn (I know he is sitting in a chair with arms at his desk)
4. hands and wrists; stretch your fingers, and loosely relax them into a fist, repeat. Wriggle your fingers as though you were drumming them on a table top, or playing a piano. Bend your wrist up, then down, up, then down. Rotate your wrists one way, then the other, and repeat.
5. shoulders; raise and lower each shoulder in turn, make them go forwards and back in turn, rotate one way and the other.
6. neck; slowly look to the left, and the to the right, and then left and right again.
7. You're done! 

"Really," he said in surprise.

"Yup. was that okay?"

"Well, yes. More trivial than I was expecting. Thought you were planning something much more strenuous".

I hope he will be happy to do this again - it only takes just over 5 minutes. I'm assuming he did try and do it all - I did point out that there was no way I could tell if he was joining in, so he could just pretend and that would keep me happy...

This was the next thing to arrive;

A small brown paper bag with a square of orange furnishing material, two other scraps of cotton, a square of wadding and a little clear bag of notions - buttons, a ribbon, embroidery floss. It's for a project that our local eco group is running (not the church one but the town one), to collect embroidered squares and sew them into a sort of cloak.

I didn't choose the colours, and am a bit non-plussed. The theme is nature; they are the colours of the desert burned dry by the sun. I knew that if I ferreted through the bags that a friend brought round I would get lost, so just picked the first one.

Can you see what it is yet? 

No? Well neither can I.

So far I have made a quilted background - not quite finished. I've added some of the pieces of brown and dark red lace that Ang sent me right at the beginning of the postcard project, and I think I will add the green sequins she included, to be seeds. Then what? Belum tahu, as they say in Indonesia, one of the few phrases I remember from over 50 years ago. It means 'don't know'.

My Cross Country Collaboration has arrived with Ang, so I can post the picture now;

 I'm tempted to leave it small - it's meant to be daffodils on the banks of Ullswater. Oh, let's go large!

Finally - Windows 11 - a 'heads up' - I haven't moved to windows 11 on this computer, although my husband has moved his. It's ok, but a bit different to Windows 10. The messages 'inviting' me to upgrade are coming thick and fast now, and need careful reading or you will find yourself upgraded willy-nilly. That might be fine for you - or it moght not. 

Tuesday 27th December - Various things...

 I'm feeling pretty pleased with what I've done today.

The '5 minutes stretch and mobility' session for today for one. It is my least favourite of the six videos, focusing on hip and leg stretches, ow ow ow! It includes the one I think of as the 'Long John Silver' stretch, where you pull your leg up behind yourself like this;

'Breathe in,' she says. 'And go a little further on the out breathe if you can.' I can't, not yet. Just to clear up any confusion,  that's the teacher, not me in the photo above.

The videos come from an online ballet site 'for seniors' and feature the instructor and her mother - anything Mum can do I ought to be able to manage, surely? Anyway, I rate her classes very highly, and was doing them Every Day until.... oh well. Time to start afresh!

I also went out into the garden. The snowdrops, usually flowering for Chrismas Day, are a bit late. That's not surprising after the very cold week.

Daffodils looking promising too

I didn't take a picture of the broad beans. They are drooping horribly, and judging by the look of the stalks I don't have much confidence in their recovery. 

I've upped my daily step count target to 1500; not much, I know, but it's still a bit cold for enjoying a walk. Quite simply, I don't manage to go fast enough to stay warm! I do try for closer to 2000 per day; I've set the target for 1500 to be surer of reaching it so that I get the 'happy happy' message on the app. I'll get going on my evening 'walking on the spot' regime to collect the couple of hundred steps I need before bedtime.

Meanwhile, we've just had supper (a wonderful plateful of scrambled eggs on toast, with grated cheese melted into the eggs, accompanied by all the leftover roasted veg from Christmas Day fried up in a bit of butter). I'll just sit here with my small glass of ginger wine for a little while first.

Thursday 17th November - Drawings round-up

 I find the sketch-a-day journal a great way of looking back at a month;

Wednesday 2nd November

I finally sorted out a measured walking path up and down the garden, from the back gate (behind me in the picture) to the end of our drive at the front. It is 80 steps long, and I can manage 'there and back' three and  half times in 6 minutes, around 230 metres.  The main problem is that our garden slopes gradually down to the back gate; more to the point is is UPHILL from the back gate to the front which slows me down considerably! Still, it is a benchmark. I've been getting about 1300 steps every day. More, if I have been winding wool or playing the piano...

Thursday night is church home group night - those of us who are free meet up on zoom, ostensibly to be a church group, and we do spend some time on Spiritual Business, and then the rest of the time on Any Other Business!

Fireworks started up in earnest on Friday 4th. We enjoyed watching a brilliant display which must have been several streets along from us from the comfort of our own home.

Saturday 5th - I started my first attempt at cross stitch...    

Sunday 6th - I became absorbed in planning the postcard project mark 2...

Monday 7th - I spent several hours typing and answering emails and writing stuff.

Tuesday 8th - we ere both brave at the dentist.

Wednesday 9th - I finished the snowflake and started the next cross stitch picture.

Thursday 10th November - I could stand it no longer and cleaned the window in the little front bedroom - as we leave the door open to let the light stream in through the landing every mark was always staring me in the face.

Friday 11th November....

Saturday 12th November - we went to a favourite farm cafe to meet the offspring for a second breakfast. Also for me to collect my birthday presents (which I opened then and there - several days early) and to deliver a couple of Christmas presents.

Sunday 13th November - I decanted the birthday chocolates into the chocolate o'clock box. I'm afraid with was chocolate o'clock several times a day until the moment when they were All Gone.

Wednesday 19th October - I'm on a roll! (It won't last!)

 Today is unexpectedly clear, as two of today's four music students have rescheduled.

I'm not complaining! But I will be tomorrow, when I deal with a fairly packed schedule, because that's when they will have rescheduled their lessons. Ho Ho Ho, I should check my diary before I make arrangements.

Thinks are getting done - I have been ordering stuff in anticipation of Christmas. I love ordering presents online or from catalogues; it feels like having a extra presents. When the stuff comes thumping through the letterbox I can have the pleasure of opening and oohing and aahing before wrapping itup and giving it away.

Today's haul was seed packets, and yesterday's was 'The Persephone Biannually' - 

a mix of short stories, reviews, news and the catalogue listing of all their books. Absolutely free; I like to get the paper copy so that I can carry it around and read it in odd moments here and there, although you can download it, or read on-line. The website is well worth a browse...

Monty Don was sowing broad beans in pots on Gardener's World the other day. He says to start them off in pots, keep them outside but protect from slugs and snail, and plant them out at the end of November or early December. So that's my plan. I've also sown some cauliflower seeds in pots, and now my 'greenhouse' - this version (I think it came from Argos originally)

is filling up nicely. It's not a proper greenhouse for two reasons; the cover is plastic, and as the contraption is about 15 years old, the plastic seems to have disappeared so it is more like a windbreak now. Somewhere between a cold frame and the great outdoors.

I've also got sunflower seedlings in it. I'm not sure what to do with these; they spilled over into a tray and started sprouting when I was refilling a bird feeder last week, and I didn't have the heart to throw them out. Can you over-winter sunflowers? Am I going to end up with 6 foot tall plants in the spare bedroom?  

I'm working on my daily step count, which sank to a disappointing number recently. I was even out at 10pm marching up and down the street to get the last 200 before bed.

Yesterday I cleaned the windows in front of my desk - What a difference! But the bend-and stretch and up-and-down-with-the-arms movements are exactly those which I find the most tiring. The bonus was that the step counter (on my wrist) got hugely over-excited by all the effort and awarded me several 100 steps. I accepted them with gratitude. I felt as though I had earned them.

Today I ought to hoover.... yup. I ought to do that. But then there's always tomorrow...

In case you missed yesterday's post, the October Newsletter is there on the pages in the sidebar of this blog. You won't see them if you are using mobile or simplified view, you have to go to the website. It's there for you to print and post to a friend if you think they would be amused to read the bits and pieces, and would enjoy a letter coming through the post.   
   

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! 

  

Tuesday 24th May - Full Schedule

Yesterday, we took 5 hours to travel 62 miles; 60 miles in the car, and 2 miles on foot.

We drove up to London (now I really understand why the train is so much easier, but we are still not venturing on public transport at the moment), parked in a pre-booked space in Sloane Square car park, and walked across to the Royal Brompton Hospital a scant mile, for my routine lung function appointment. My average walking speed is around one mile per hour these days, especially is it is even slightly uphill. Wearing any kind of mask also slows me down. That accounts for two of the miles, and two of the hours. 

But I did enjoy the walk. It is such a pretty part of London, and as it was the day before the opening of the Chelsea Flower show, there was plenty to see. Many of the shops, even in the back streets, had exuberant floral decorations spilling out onto the pavement.

 I shall find out more about the results when I speak to someone at the clinic (over zoom) next week, but the lovely man who was operating the machine talked me through the figures in outline, and they were pretty reassuring. I'm always such a doom-merchant as the time for the tests draws near, and usually discover that I have been worrying over nothing.

The drive is only 30 miles each way, but once you get anywhere close to London the the speed of travel slows dramatically!

Both of us were pretty well zombified by the day - it is the most public outing we have been on since March 2020, even including the two trips to the Royal Free Hospital last year, once for routine tests, once for a 'right heart catheter', a procedure like an angiogram, but on the other side, to measure internal blood pressures in the heart. I find myself having these every five years or so, to see how things are progressing ( so far the results have been stable, which is good).

Today I did my experimental sewing for the postcard project. I've bought some stuff called 'magic paper'. According to the information, you can draw on the paper (what kind of pen, I would like to know??), cut out your design, peel it off the backing and stick it on the fabric. Then embroider, using stranded cotton or perle embroidery cotton. Finally you dissolve the magic paper with cool water. 

So I did all that today;

I used a frixion pen to draw the picture. The magic paper sticks nicely to the linen, giving it a satisfactory stiffness which makes it easier to sew. I used some black perle cotton.

The finished embroidery - as usual things changed as I went along...

And when I dunked the sewing in a bowl of cool water, the paper turned into a sticky goo within seconds. I shall know tomorrow when the fabric has dried whether all the goo has come off.

 I'm very pleased with how simple it was to use.

So now you know the theme for my picture this month...

 

Wednesday 9th Feb - Ribbons and Skylarks

 On Monday we went for a walk - Out! Away! Open Spaces! Sun!

You wouldn't know it from this photograph, but we went down to the south coast and walked a little way along the seafront at a place called Goring Gap;

It is one of the few places along the coast between Worthing and Brighton and Hove where the fields come sweeping down from the top of the South Downs to the sea.

I suppose the distance wasn't much more than one-and-a-half miles, but by the end of it my legs were as weary as that time we walked from Leeds to the Bingley 5-Rise locks along the Leeds to Liverpool Canal one night. (Why did we do that?)

You may notice that the line marking our path doesn't complete the circle - I came to a stop at this point, and BB had an opportunity to stretch his legs after walking at a snail's pace as he went to fetch the car!

The sea front was bright and cold, with a bracing breeze blowing in our faces, groups of people walking their dogs along beach at the edge of the water. The tide was well out, so there was a steep shingle bank to climb down, or up on the way back, so we stayed mostly on the rough path between the green grass and the pebbles.

The we turned inland, sheltered from the wind by the houses marking the boundary of Ferring, and walked through the fields along the the ditches bordering the fields. There were skylarks singing overhead - reminding me of the times my friend at boarding school used to skive Sunday Church by gong to the top of the downs - still the South Downs but further West - and lie on the warm turf in the sun listening to the larks, keeping an anxious eye out for any teachers, and also making sure we would get back to school in time for lunch.

There was a bare tree, decorated with ribbons halfway through the trees;

one ribbon had 'Happy Birthday' printed along it. Could this be a clue? Another, rather up-market gros-grain ribbon had 'Dior' on it, and must have come from a gift box.  

I have an urge to choose a tree somewhere near us and tie a ribbon to it, and see if more ribbons appear over time...

 

 

Saturday 29th January - This and that...

 Yesterday, a woodpecker came to the bird feeder. My, what a handsome bird! So slim and upright, such bright colours, so easy to spot!

I'm a novice at this birdwatching game. At the beginning of the month I bought some entry-level binoculars from the RSPB, and also a birdfeeder to replace and old one that had broken, and a 'selection pack' of bird food. Suet and meals worms - yum - at least, yum if you are a starling or a woodpecker.

This is the weekend of the RSPB 'Big Bird Watch' or something. I though I might join in - but we don't get many birds (next-door's-cat, maybe?) and I'm not that quick with the binoculars to get them lined up with where the bird is before it is gone. So perhaps I'll leave it until next year. We get sparrows, and starlings, sometimes robins and blackbirds, and, for a couple of days, a thrush was working across the grass. Oh, yes, and magpies. And squirrels (I know they aren't birds, but they still use the bird feeder.) 

I think I shall send off for more suet balls, or logs, or sticks, or whatever. Shopping for bird food is as complex as choosing which tomatoes, brand of cheese, kind of yogurt. Or cat food.

Our cats are really showing their age. I have to cut clumps of fur off McCavity, the fluffy cat, because she is too stiff to reach everywhere. Leo has shorter fur, which ought to be easier to deal with, but she has a fine undercoat which quickly matts up into a felted layer that has to be teased apart, as much as you can at a sitting until she gives a warning meow and swipes at you. They move creakily about the house, favouring an arthritic hip or shoulder.

I was beginning to creak a bit too, so I have started a 'ten day basics' online ballet course. It costs £15 for unlimited access to a set of ten videos. I first came across this delightful website back in 2019. 

It is run by a mother-and-daughter team. The daughter, Susan, started teaching her mother, Elizabeth, ballet because Elizabeth needed to do something to strengthen her ankles and improve her balance, and things grew from there. 

When we were on our unforgettable one week river cruise along the Seine back in 2019 

Happy memories... I kept my first ever illustrated travel journal...

I used to do one of the free online exercise classes they offer every morning on the tiny balcony outside our cabin, propping my phone up carefully so that it wouldn't fall in. I've done the free classes off and on ever since, more 'off' than 'on' but having the basics explained is very helpful. I'm taking about two or three days to complete each level, but that's fine. I've also discovered I can convert time spent doing ballet into miles (or fractions of miles!) to add to my current 'Conqueror' challenge. Unfortunately ballet adds very little to my step count as pointing a toe (tendue) and returning to first position doesn't count as a step, even though it feels like exercise!

It solves the problem of really not wanting to go out for a walk when the weather is so cold, but feeling that 'one ought to do something rather than sitting about all day.

I've made almond macaroons this week. I could show you a picture, but I've just finished the last one. Not macarons - just reading the recipe was exhausting. I realise now why I disliked them so much when I was little - I have a feeling they were usually made with desiccated coconut, or, if made with ground almonds, almond essence was added. I didn't have any ground almonds, so put a packet of flaked almonds into the word food processor. This meant that they were more coarsely ground, and I think that is an improvement. Now, about those left over yolks and half an egg white... two yolks went into the scrambled eggs last night, and I shall make scones this afternoon with what's left.

My brother said he used to use cornflour when he made them (he used to make macaroons? well I never did!) so next time I will use this recipe and make them much smaller. I used a glace cherry to decorate - I'm sure that's how I remember them. They peeled off the baking paper fairly easily, but I think I might get some rice paper just to recreate my memories.    

The baking was to provide a gluten-free accompaniment for when family came to visit on about the only sunny afternoon last week. My brother and sister-in-law came up, collecting my uncle and father enroute and went for a meal locally. Just as they finished the meal - (they asked for affrogatos for dessert, not on the menu, but the waitress, who was Italian, produced them with great pleasure) - the rain stopped and we were able to meet in the garden and enjoy tea/coffee, and tome together. It was blooming cold sitting out in the garden in the pale afternoon sunshine, but we wore coats and hats and had blankets. Just a simply lovely and rare hour with family.   

Affrogato

Put a scoop of good vanilla ice cream into a suitable glass or bowl for each person.

Pour over a shot of hot espresso coffee.

Serve at once.

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. 

Monday 8th November - Round the weeks we go again

I managed to go for a very short walk - up the road and back again - before lunch. Not much to say. Peering into the gardens, looking at the last of the summer flowers, and a few autumn flowers. It was fresh air. That's all I can find to say about it.

That sounds a bit grey - and that's what the day is. I call them 'eating days', when no biscuits, cakes, crisps or anything are safe from consumption. The only thing to do is NOT TO TAKE THE FIRST BITE but it is tool late for that advice now.

The  chilli sour dough croutons were delicious - the end of a load, cubed, tossed in chilli oil and zapped in the air-fryer for maybe 5 minutes at about 170. The load was pretty old and dry so they didn't take long to go crisp and golden.

However, it was a few days ago that I made them. (Oh, chilli oil? That is simplicity itself. Shove a couple of whole dried chillis into a small bottle of olive oil and let it fester, sorry, infuse for some weeks. How many? I dunno - it gets stronger as the weeks go by and the oil is used. Just tip more oil in as necessary).

Last night - Ooo-er - the air-fryer suddenly switched itself on, no, off, no, onoffonoffonoffon. With loud and anxious beeps. We fixed the firstpart ofthe problem by pulling out the plug from the wall. A bit of research informs us that they last around 4-5 years, depending on useage, and that this was a fault in the earlier digitally controlled versions of this brand. Phillips, if you need to know.

We bought ours in 2017 and use it most days... so, we now had a different problem. Himself has spent the morning researching, and come to the conclusion that the problem in the early models appears to have gone away, and a new near-identical one will be arriving on Thursday because we are very much in favour of Air-Fryers. Might might not leave it permanently switched on...

I've been knitting; the green snakey scarf continues to grow. Every so often I do a stitch count and find there are no longer 40 stitches on the needles. It doesn't matter - I just create one in an inconspicuous place and carry on. The edges are a bit uneven in places but who is going to see?

(The pattern - cast on however many stitches - do some counting and measuring to find out what you would like. I'm using double knitting yarn on 5mm needles, I think. I read somewhere you go up a needles size if you are knitting something in garter stitch if you want a looser fabric. Then, for odd numbered rows, Knit 2 together, knit to last stitch, knit through back and front of stitch to make one so you keep the same number of stitches. For even umber rows, knit all the stitches. It is useful to put a marker on the side where you do the twiddly stuff. It must be that I keep forgetting the 'make an extra stitch' at the end of the odd rows when the action on television gets too intense. If you need to 'fix' by adding an extra stitch, just add a loop with a twist to stop it being an ordinary yarn over part way along a row.)

The blue tea cosy has been a bit backwards and forwards, but having unpicked a whole round, stitch by stitch, I have it bristling with stitch markers signalling the pattern repeats and it is back on track.

Those vertical lines between the tea pots mark where I shall CUT through the knitting to make the place where the handle, or the spout, goes through - there is another set of lines on the other side! 

Talking of tea...

        

 I do have more than two pairs, as is happens - they last me a long time. No, today's title is because I now have two pairs of shoes that need cleaning....

I have felt extremely lethargic this past week - covid booster reaction? or was I tired? Did I have a cold?

Today was a sprakly kind of morning, and as I sat there reading the November chapter of Emma Mitchell's book 'The Wild Remedy' 

her words struck home, how being outside lifts your mood, and how much she loves to search for colour in the autumn.. So I got up, put on a coat, and we went 'down the back', which means through the back gate, through the dense laurel hedge which screens the gate, down the steep slidy  bank onto the cycle track/footpath which runs behind all our gardens. 

What a great idea that was! I felt so much more alive after the walk; watching joyful dogs racing in and out of the stream and through the trees, stopping to peer at the amazing lichen growing on the trees, standing in the sun with a gentle shower of beech leaves drifting upon us...

So that's the first pair of shoes drying off in the hallway before being cleaned and polished - some sections of the paths are a quagmire after the recent wet weather.

Later, after lunch, I stirred myself into action again and planted up more tulips and crocuses and narcissuses (narcissi?)

I am have several half-barrel planters, but I like to use them for beans and climbing vegetables in the summer. This year I have bought a lot of bulbs to try 'lasagne planting', where you layer up the bulbs in a fairly deep pot; some earth, some narcissus, more earth, some tulips, more earth, and crocus, and finally, you've guessed it, more earth! So my idea is to do 'lasagne planting' in a number of tall narrow pots, and then sink these into the half-barrel planter, so that when they have finished flowering I can just lift them out and leave them to finish the season somewhere else.

While excavating the half barrel to the very bottom we came across numbers of 'mystery bulbs' already trying to get going, so they have been rescued and replanted. I have no idea what they are - probably ordinary daffodils. What with one thing and another I have ended up with the half barrel full of tall thin pots of lasagne planting, another earthenware pot which has stood empty all summer also full of lasagne bulbs, and two pots of 'mystery' bulbs. Surely something will manage to flower?

Meanwhile that is another pair of shoes looking slightly the worse for wear!

I'm catching up with the 30 days of creativity drawing...

I'm not that much into 'colouring in', but I do enjoy drawing.

 

Friday October 1st - A week is a long time

 I've been on the new tablets for about three weeks now, and the difference is staggering. It's not just that I can walk further when I do the 6 minute walk test, but it's the whole experience of steeping out along the pavement. At the end of 6 minutes I have walked nearly half as far again, and although I am breathing hard - too hard to talk - I'm not gasping like a fish out of water, struggling to get the air into my lungs.

I can now walk fast enough to keep warm! There's a novelty! I used to make sure I was wearing enough layers in order not to get cold.

The new blood pressure tablets are also doing their job - too efficiently, it seems. Gone are the puffy ankles that I was getting in the afternoon - hurrah! - but I am constantly feeling just a little bit woozy - as though I was in a boat, gently rocking on a calm pond. Luckily I take another blood pressure medicine as well, so, following a quick telephone consultation with the clinic I am experimenting with reducing it over the next couple of days. 

It is an extraordinary feeling, this sudden return to walking freely, no longer preparing for changes in gradients along the almost flat roads around where we live. Going for 'a walk around the block' takes thirty minutes instead of nearer fifty minutes. If I sound excited, it's because I am!

Anyway, enough on that topic - what else?

I have hopefully averted a minor domestic crisis - running out of yoghurt - by making a batch of home-made. Reading the Tracing Rainbows blog today reminded me (that apple loaf recipe looks good too!).

Here's the recipe I use followed by a couple of recipes.

 I now have a food vacuum flask full of the cooled milk and yogurt mixture hopefully doing what it is supposed to do; I shall look inside tomorrow morning. Another excellent topping for yoghurt is brown sugar, the darker the better in my view.

These pages come from a book called 'The Crafty Cook', written by Michael Barry. I have just googled his name, and discovered that he died in 2011; reading his obituary  I find that also had a career as one of the founding members of Classic FM - well I never did. We always watched 'The Crafty Cook' on television. It is where we first encountered Jilly Goolden and her enthusiasm for wine.

The state of the dining room table has been a recurrent theme in this blog; on Monday it became truly spectacular when we woke up to discover the boiler in the kitchen had been leaking overnight, and the work surfaces and floor and under the washing machine were all properly wet. Everything was decanted to the dining room all in a hurry and the engineer called out. Meanwhile the carbon monoxide detector started its plaintive beep - I'm sure that was just a coincidence.

He appeared later that day, took one look, stuck a 'danger, do not turn on appliance' notice on the boiler and started ordering parts. He came back the next day and spent the morning dismantling the boiler, fitting great complicated contraptions and then testing everything. Success - all done and he left by lunchtime taking his notice with him. We couldn't persuade the detector to stop beeping so banished it to the shed, pending the arrival of the replacement.

While the engineer was roaming around between the loft and the kitchen and everywhere in between, I stayed out of the way in the dining room, turned my back on the chaos and did some messing about with the paints. 

If all works out these will be greetings cards, once I have sorted out the splodges of colours using pen and ink. I'm hoping I will have a seascape, flowers, and autumn leaves, but I won't know until I have finished whether I like them. That's kind of annoying, freeing, and interesting, all in one go. 

I'm still doing the 100 day dress challenge... today is day 28. I've put on an extra layer because it's Autumn - just enough to not need a fleecy jacket. 

It certainly makes getting up in the morning simple; fresh underwear, current 'legs' and the dress. I have ordered some tights from Snag tights to make a change. I can't tell when they will arrive because I suspect I mistyped my email address on the order form. I very nearly succumbed to the idea of  the 'care bear collection' and also to the 'duo collection' where the legs are wildly different colours... 

 

 

  

Friday 24th September - Let's go on a walk

 At the moment I'm on a roll; I am reaching my step count most days (having adjusted it to something more attainable) and going for a walk most days.

Here's where I went today:

Like everyone on this side of our road, we have a back gate giving access onto a network of footpaths and public open space. Access to some of it has been under threat while the council tried to persuade us all that putting several thousand houses on the council owned golf course bordering this space was in everyone's best interests but for the moment the land is saved.

We have deliberately created a concealed access, so most people waking, jogging or cycling past wouldn't notice it; we have surprised a few as we suddenly appear from the thick undergrowth. First you make your way along the top of the bank, near the fence and ducking beneath the hedge

  then you cautiously push through the branches and brambles, clinging on to the branches to descends a slope that becomes slippery after rain

and emerge, blinking in the strong afternoon sun.

This path is popular, but not crowded. It is a cycle track, dog-walking route, jogging route and just 'let's get out for a bit of fresh air' route. The houses are on the right, up the 2 metre bank (I would have said 6 feet, but Boris Johnson has this mad plan to make us all use imperial measurements again). To the left, through the trees, are a couple of shallow streams, with just enough water to trickle over the stones. 

We call this 'The 'Ricketty-Racketty Bridge'; when we first arrived it was an unstable wooden affair, and we used to play out the story of 'The Three Billy-Goats Gruff'; the children crouched under the bridge, dipping the hems of their coats in the water pretending to be trolls and leaping out with terrible shouts as we innocently walked across. 

I followed one of the tracks though the woods and came out in a corner of a meadow. There is a bench, but it was already occupied - it usually is. Teenagers 'hanging-out', parents and toddlers having a half-way snack, someone reading or scrolling through their phone.

I went as far as the golf course - everyone knows what golf courses look like - crossed over the fair way when no-one seemed to be actually hitting a golf ball in my direction. There were a couple of players in electric golf buggies circling round each other, as though limbering up for some kind robot wars tournament at the fifteenth hole. I waited to see if they would start jousting using golf clubs - not today.

So, I went back through the woods along a different path until I reach the bridge again

You can see the gully is 2-3 metres (7-10 feet) with the sweet little stream meandering through. When the children were young we used to wade upstream as far as we could, pushing through obstacles, scrambling up the banks. Don't be fooled by the tranquillity; every Winter, when there's been enough rain, the stream becomes a broad, dangerous, turbulent, fast-flowing river, rising up and over the banks in a matter of hours and flooding right across the cycleway you saw at the beginning.

The run-off from building one thousand houses on the golf course would all have down come this way, choking the bridge downstream, roiling up over the main road and into the houses along the way.   

We've a few months yet before we'll wake to that sight again.

1500 steps, just under three-quarters of a mile. Sorry, i should have written 1.13 km.