Wednesday 14th October - October squares

 Here they all are;

Ang's:

7^th October 2026 – Block #74 – Alternate Eyelets 

After K sent me an eyelets square last month, I was greatly challenged to try a lace pattern myself. The next one seemed to be this alternate eyelets pattern. 

Seven or eight eyelets in each row, but adjusted so that they made a diamond pattern. 

I memorised the 8 row sequence very quickly, and was able to knit a square in the car on the journey to London [to see the Tapestry] and another on the way back. I was so taken with these two [random yarns] that I quickly knitted two more in plain yarns. I used that blue random in July, and the autumnal golds in August. 

The top plain one reminds me of raspberries! The last one is snowy white. Summer-autumn-winter, how the seasons flow into one another…
I like very simple memorable stitch patterns.

Ang sent me the blue variegated square and the while one - lucky me to get two in one month! 

Here are mine;

Block 49 St Ives

These were incredibly quick to knit; it's a ten-row pattern, but astonishingly easy to learn and only five repeats. Plus, there's only one row of the hated purl to knit, and two rows of rib, which I don't mind so much.

 

 I gave Ang the right hand square - the colours are much more subdued than the photograph, but still slightly Autumnal.

 I'll definitely be repeating this one, perhaps in a less fluffy yarn so the stitch definition is clearer. 

I have knitted one square in a more complex eyelet pattern, but it's twin is defeating me at the moment, so I'm putting it aside until I'm SURE I will always have the correct number of stitches at the end of every row. It's incredibly frustrating to find that yet again I am short by one stitch. A missed yarn over, somewhere...

 

  

Tuesday October 13th - days of nothing much

The days have been drifting past... Sunday... Monday... now it's 9am on Tuesday morning

I haven't been doing much, mainly existing in a sort of limbo while rains outside and is sort of dull inside. 

I've also been feeling fatigued, not at all the same as tired, I might say. A sort of heavy lassitude, plus a bit short of breath, but I find this state od mind can switch on and off like a light, if one can only find the switch.

Yesterday's 'EverydayFaith' reading and reflection wasn't very encouraging at the beginning;

From the book of Lamentations chapter 2, verse 17

 My soul is bereft of peace

I have forgotten what happiness is

so I say, 'Gone is my glory,

and all that I had hoped for from the Lord.

The thought of my affliction and my

homelessness

is wormwood and gall.

My soul continually thinks of it

and is bowed down within me

Which I didn't find at all encouraging! But then came the next bit;

But this l call to mind,

and therefore I have hope:

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases,

his mercies never come to an end;

they are new every morning:

great is your faithfulness.

The Lord is my portion,' says my soul,

'therefore I will hope in him.

The Lord is good to those who wait for him,

to the soul that seeks him.

It is good that one should wait quietly

for the salvation of the Lord.

Aha! Aha! A light switch! Just the words I needed to show me a way out of the glums.

Later, as I was writing in one of the notebooks I swap with friends (sounds like a lot of notebooks, but there are only two) I seized hold of paints and brush and coloured a page.

I'll 'go in' with a pen sometime when I've an idea of what I'll do.

Hurrah! I feel like myself again!

Saturday 10th October - what I'm reading

 Charlie Fletcher - The Stone Heart trilogy. 

I can't remember what put me in mind of this; I read them about 10 years ago when I borrowed the first one from the year 6 library at one of the schools I was teaching in. It's at the top end of Yr 6, I would say, set in a parallel London where statues come to life, the evil ones and the good ones, and Jack and Edie have to somehow navigate this dangerous world and set things right. I've reread the first book, and am engrossed by the second. 

A Fortnight in September - R C Sherriff

It's about an ordinary family, mother, father, older son, a clerk, and the daughter working for a dressmaker, all still unmarried and living at home, and the youngest, still a schoolboy. They always take the same two weeks at the same boarding house every year in Bognor Regis. It's set in 1930

I'm finding this a slow read, probably because I'm impatient with the characters... they are stuck in their lives, and yet each wanting more... I'll persevere though, as I'm hoping they will unstick themselves from their tiny, closed lives... 

It's a bit like reading a Barbara Pym.

The Blue Castle - L M Montgomery

Romantic fiction, set in a fictional town based on Bala in the Muskoka region of Ontario, Canada, in around 1900. I enjoyed it; it's the sort of romance I could imagine LMMontgomery's Anne Shiley (Anne of Green Gables) writing! 

My Life on the Road - Gloria Steinem 

This is our Book Club pick. It's her autobiography.  I wasn't expecting to like this, but I'm fascinated by her life, and by the history of the various women's issues she was involved in. It's really making me think about these issues too.

Thursday 8th October - the day of the tackers

I never knew that plasterboard putter-uppers are known as tackers.

They were here all morning tacking away... then, just after lunch, we realised the world had gone quiet. 

'Perhaps they had stopped for lunch?'

No, everyone had gone!

Later two men from the building company came to collect the left over plasterboard and because 'the tackers never leave the place properly tidy'. The builders have very high standards.

The floor is now covered with screed so it is more or less at the final level. It will be a while before it is dry enough for the laminate flooring can be laid.

This is where I plan to sit and look out at the garden..

I wonder if the tackers noticed the eyes?

Tuesday 6th October

Sunday 4th October  - do nothing day. But we did catch the BBC1 Young Chorister of the Year finals for the junior age group. Each chorister sang a well-known hymn with such beauty and conviction... if you didn't see it, do look it up on iplayer. 

Here are the junior and senior winners from 2015;

Their voices were such a contrast to the young singers performing a song from Matilda; 

The human voice is such a versatile instrument. 

Monday 5th October 

The plasterer was working hard all day putting the top coat of render on the outside of the extension. We chose 'parchment', and I'm really pleased. He hasn't yet done the left hand corner...

While I was out there I took a picture of one of the last few leaves on my witch hazel. You can see the beautiful way it is turning from green to bronze;

Tuesday 6th October 

We were up at 6, ready for the builders at 7 and the delivery of the screed at 7.30. This proved to be a large pile of dirty grey cementy looking stuff, tipped out into a heap on a thoughtfully placed plastic sheet.

One lad barrowed it round to the extension and shovelled it through the door. The othe man had the back-breaking job, on his hands and knees, of packing it in and smoothing it down by working a plank over and over the surface. It looked like very hard physical work.

We left them to it, and went out for the day! I did at least make them a cup of tea before I left.

Saturday 3rd October - easy day?

 It's been tremendously noisy all week; I can't remember but did I already say that I consider electric screw-drivers to be a fiendish invention? The electricians had two on the go all through Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday,  and then the builders added to, and continued the row for the rest of the week!

I seized a quiet hour today for checking through the finances and paying various bills... interrupted several times by a locksmith coming to measure up and then change the lock on on the front door. Somehow I managed to keep track of what I was doing (maybe?)

A locksmith? We left the builders with a key one day, and it appears to be 'misplaced'. They have agreed to pick up the bill, because BB and I are not keen to just have another spare cut at the cobblers. It just makes everything secure again.

We once changed the lock simply because a visitor accidentally took a key home with them and posted it back to our house, before we could arrange for them to send it via a friend. You could feel the key quite distinctly in the envelope. It's unlikely that someone would copy the key while it was enroute, but changing the lock ensured our peace of mind.

Anyway, I finished the paper work and we have a new lock.

The rest of the day was much more relaxing!

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My little tree has already discarded most of its leaves

I need to find the right place in the garden to plant it. I don't think it is enjoying living in that container. It was such a small spindly little thing when I got it last year and look at it now!

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It was lovely to meet friends at the Cowdray Farm Shop yesterday. It was warm and sunny, the cafes were good, and we had so much to talk about. We only see each other a couple of times a year so every meet-up is special.

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