Sunday 18th October - Light

 

Back when I was doing a couple of hours of after school piano teaching most nights, I used to light this candle lantern by the front door to greet the children.

This week's chapter of '52 Tiny changes for a quieter Life' suggests lighting (or switching on!) a candle and just sitting still and watching the flame for a couple of minutes. Good idea! I'm looking at my battery operated candles to choose one. Some of them don't flicker, but the older ones do. They also have the advantage of a remote control to switch them on and off.

Meanwhile there is always our metal suncatcher to watch as it slowly twirls in the slight draught;

Making shiny patterns on the wall beside it, and also on the floor;

Simeon said 'He is a light to lighten the gentiles' when he saw the baby Jesus at the Temple, 

Jesus said 'I am the Light'

John, in the very first chapter of his gospel wrote 'the Light came into the world, and that Light was life to all mankind'

and

'The Light came into the world, and the darkness conprehendeth it not'

(I'm quoting from memory... but I reckon I'm pretty close)

I love the triple meanings inside the word comprehend, 

as in 'understand' or 'encompass' or 'include'.

Jesus, God the Father, the Holy Spirit as a Light, a lighthouse, a torch, an inner fire keeping me going...

Like a candle flame

Flickering small in our darkness

Uncreated light

Shines through infant eyes

God is with us, alleluia

God is with us, alleluia

Come to save us, alleluia

Come to save us

Alleluia!

Stars and angels sing

Yet the earth sleeps in shadows

Can this tiny spark

Set a world on fire?

Yet his light shall shine

From our lives, Spirit blazing

As we touch the flame

Of his holy fire

Saturday 17th October - new me! Cooking and knitting

Today's plan of action... cooking and shopping (and knitting)

When did I last make a cake? August, I think. But I've eggs to use up... hence cake and quiche.

I cannot believe the same person has been slumped for a couple of days managed all this before lunch;

At the back, all the ingredients for a chocolate cake ready to mix together. I often used to make little cakes with my aged 5-7 years Sunday school class. I'd put all the ingredients in a tupperware mixing bowl, leaving the eggs whole, and when it was time we would sit in a circle. I'd crack in the eggs and get the mix started, and pass the bowl round.

 I'd explain that they had to treat the mixture gently, Just One Stir Each so as not to spoil it. Of course there was the one who just had to go at the cake madly and give it a wild whirring... 'oh no!' I cried out as the other children looked taken aback. 'You've taken too many turns, and all your friend's turns too'. 

He looked at his friend, quite upset and passed the bowl to him. 'I think if you have your stir, and do it very gently, everything will be all right', I said.

Well, of course the little cakes were fine, and were borne in triumph to their families when it was time to go back into church. 

In front of the cake are two pots of stewed fruit, a thermos of warm milk with a bit of live yogurt to make a new batch and a crustless quiche for supper. That's five eggs used, one to go.

After lunch I made up the cake and put a loaf into the bread machine. I do feel virtuous! I expect normal me will return soon enough... and I  don't think I'm going to make dahl today,  although one never knows...

.....

While I was slumped yesterday I watched some  a lot of YouTube videos.

I don't know how I came upon this one... apparently this style is called Combination Continental knitting. Maybe it was the title that caught my eye...'fast and lazy knitting '

All I know is that it has transformed my attitude to purl knitting. Hurrah! I haven't watched all of it as I wanted to remember how she does knit and purl before I went any further. 

I was really looking for videos of Joan Hickson and Julia McKenzie knitting when they were being Miss Marple. I've always admired the way they hold the needles in a pencil hold, so elegant. This style is known as the English style, apparently very common before circular needles and continental knitting styles came in over here.

When I first learned to knit aged about 7, from Sister Patricia at the convent school, I held my needles in a clumsy grip which meant taking my right hand off my knitting at every stitch. I was looking for a video to demonstrate, and found this;

Although I'm not sure how any garment ever got knitted looking at the way they hold and use the yarn!

Gromit the dog is another 'celebrity knitter'.

Friday 16th October - what on earth was

 I thinking of to write a blog about nothing much happening on Tuesday?

Wednesday's and Thursday's posts were basically low-effort write ups while I - that is, we, because BestBeloved  has to cope too - dealt with everything that came tumbling into our lives the rest of the week.

Tuesday: drive to London for routine lung function tests. I'm glad my schoolfriend and I decided to reschedule meeting up afterwards as it took ages, much longer than usual,  to get through the tests. This was solely because the tests are done without using supplementary O2, so we have to resume the O2 after each attempt to get me back up to a respectable oxygen level , then stop the O2 and wait for me to stabilise before resuming. Height ho. The technicians (two; a trainee and supervisor) were kind and patient so it was a good experience and the results no worse than last year - which is encouraging. 

Wednesday: the extension leaks. We knew the hup! fitters hadn't finished leading the roof, so I suppose we should have expected this. We haven't seen hair nor hide of them for two weeks; turns out they were both unwell. First one, then his partner. Are you thinking covid? I am. Tthey spend hours travelling in the van together from one job to the next. I know several people locally who have come down with it in the past few weeks. Nobody seems to be testing any more.

At 6pm the oxygen concentrator I use downstairs started making intermittent knocking sounds, as though the little gnome that works the mechanism wanted to come out. Since none of the alarms came on, and it was close to bed time I left it for the next day.

Thursday: my first event was a flu vaccination. I had the covid one a few weeks ago. Then to ring about the concentrator and order new oxygen cylinders... 

and a long meeting on site with the architect to look at the leaks in the extension. Long telephone conversations ensued with the company installing the hup! and the builders... I just sat in the garden listening to the talk and birdsong and looking around...

the issue of the leaks has disrupted the whole schedule for the plasterer, painter and kitchen delivery. Ugh. They sorted most of it out between them,

But

I can't change the delivery date for the kitchen (Thursday) and that's now the day when the plasterer will come. He can't do the plastering around a stack of units, and we can't fit in in the house and we don't gave a garage...

Friday: a friend who lives one minute away in the next road has offered their garage! I did ask some of the neighbours close by if they could help, but they don't have space (surprise surprise!). But asking them did mean we spent a little time chatting to people we know only to wave to, getting to know them a little better.

The huppers were on site, and PROMISE they have finished the roof and made it properly water tight. We are praying for rain over the weekend to give it a good test.

The oxygen machine technician came and swapped out the concentrator for another one. This one doesn't appear to have a trapped gnome trying to get out! He also took away four empty oxygen cylinders and left us with full ones.

That's my tale of woe, but like all good stories I think we have a happy ending. 

Apart from the flu vaccination... it's definitely making me feel a bit seedy. I've been mollycoddling myself with tea and chocolate biscuits, and youtube videos, and I reckon I should be over it tomorrow. 

Goodbye Friday, 🌙 let's see what Saturday brings🌞 

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.