Sunday 28th February - End of week, end of month

 It was the best of times, it was the worst of times - this month has ended with endings. My aunt's funeral was on Friday; she died a couple of weeks ago, unexpectedly, after a short illness. Quite a few of the wider family, nephews and nieces, a few close friends, managed to be there, along with my uncle and the immediate family. I didn't go - I wish I had, but I'm still shielding and It is going to take more than one vaccination dose before I am ready to join the rest of society.

I was grateful for the beautiful weather this weekend for my aunt's funeral at their local cemetery. It is a hard time, but eased by sun and a feeling of freshness, of Spring, of better days ahead, weather-wise at least.

I wondered whether or not to say anything about this in the blog - I try and focus on the cheerful and positive, but to ignore all unpleasant, painful, negative experiences would be less honest. Life isn't always a bowl of roses or a bed of cherries, no, that doesn't sound quite right...

The buds on the camellia are taking their time, slowly, slowly growing fatter and fatter. There is just a touch of red showing through the protective covering of the petals. I am keeping an eye on them, hoping to catch the first flowers.

Buds on the lilac! Look at these! If the warm weather continues there will soon be some leaves! 

Now, this is an experimental cake. A Magic Milk Cake. It is sitting on the parchment paper I used to line the baking tin ( and it is a very god thing that I did line the tin as the cake is extremely soft). You combine eggs and egg yolks, melted butter, not very much flour, rather a lot of milk, and stiffly-whipped egg whites, tip the slightly unpromising mixture into the lined tin and bake.

Somehow is separates into a base layer, egg custard mixture and a sponge on top. We had some of it while it was still warm as a desert, and the rest later n the day. All gone. I followed this recipe . There are lemon and chocolate versions on that website (Jo Cooks) and now I have sent off for a book;

 Top tips 

I made half quantities - just as well, as I suspect that the two of us would have eaten all of however much I made.

I think that a slightly smaller baking tin would have worked better, because then the layers would have been a bit thicker.

I whisked the egg whites in a separate bowl first, so that I could use the same beater for the rest of the mixing.

It would be a really good idea if I had made sure to stir the egg yolk and sugar together before setting the beater going - that might have avoided spraying caster sugar all over the worktop!

I had finished knitting the teapot motif of the tea cosy. Now I will repeat the pink design, and then decrease for the top. It is incredibly addictive to knit round and round and see the patterns appear.

I have read on in the instructions; once I have finished the main knitting, I have to darn in all the loose ends.

 There appear to be thousands of them; partly because I am reusing my godmother's scraps of wool, and scraps they have turned out to be. Still, this is a 'process' project, not a 'product' project. Just as well, as I am not that keen on the colours, and the cosy is going to be for a LARGE teapot. It has a 'vintage' look to it; but then the wool is probably around fifty years old. It look to me like something that would turn up in a sale of work in aid of the church hymnal fund'. Some (un)lucky person is going to end up with a family-sized tea-cosy...  

We went for a walk today; the first time I have ventured 'out' out, as opposed to just in the garden, for quite a while. We took the O2 machine, and I walked 2 km, or 1 1/4 miles without needing to pause for breath in spite of several gradients. I'm feeling very satisfied with myself. 

Another Friday already - 26th February

 Getting back into the groove of piano teaching was a bit of a shock, but I have made it so far. My teaching week ends on Saturday morning, with Friday usually being a non-teaching day.

It's been a fairly busy week in a slow sort of way; when I write down everything that I have done at the end of the day then I realise how much did, or didn't get done.

When was the 23rd February? Last Tuesday? That's when I spotted that all the little tete a tete narcissus were looking very enthusiastic. I drew a rough sketch on the corner of an envelope of a letter to a friend;

They have been in the garden since January 2016; when my mother was in a nursing home that winter. I used to buy several pots of them in bud, and put them on her windowsill. Once they had gone over I would replace them with new pots, and just plant the old ones along the back hedge. I think this is the best they have ever been.

I also refiled all my fountain pens with various inks on Tuesday. I find it such a messy job. 

I started a linocut of daffodils on Wednesday; first I drew the design on the lino with a Black Prince pencil - I remember those from my Kindergarten Days - they were slightly thicker pencils with a shiny black lead. How I have ended up with one now, I have no idea, but it is perfect for drawing on lino. My big problem was remembering to LEAVE the black lines uncut, instead of cutting along them.   

This is how it ended up when I did a rough test print. I love the way lino prints can look as though everything is in motion. I can see a few places where I want to carve a leettle bit more, and a few places where I wish I had carved a leetle bit less - isn't that always the way, though? 

I'm also having a trial run through a pattern for a tea cosy. It is in traditional fair isle, knitted entirely round and round like a tube, Then, the dangerous magic happens; you CUT a slit on either side for the handle and the spout and do something to stop it all coming to bits.

I've got the proper Shetland yarn to knit the one in the picture, but while I was waiting for the smaller needles to arrive, I thought I would make one to see how it works, using the wrong wool in the wrong colours on the wrong size needles. It's a good job it doesn't have to fit a person, just a teapot.

I'm a bit further on; it looks ok on the outside but the inside is a knitter's nightmare, full of loose ends from the colour changing, and loose ends because the wool I am using is from some other jumpers and I have discovered it is all in shortish bits, about a yard or so long. 

Today has been a lovely sunny day, if chilly in the shade. I've been able to spend quite a lot of time outside. Even the cats have been out and about. 

Leo prefers a nice stagnant buck of water to the fresh water in her bowl. Of course. 

Friday 19th February - Lent!

 Those pancakes last Monday were the only ones we had this week. I don't really do a 'food' fast in Lent so we will probably have pancakes some other time.

This half term week has been a pleasant break from teaching, and I've enjoyed doing more writing, more reading, more drawing. And even a bit of housework here and there. I have completed spring cleaning the bathroom and loo - that's a 'win', and will have done the stairs and landing as well by the end of February. 

The hall is going to be harder; there are heaps and heaps in the hall.

stuff left from my godmother's house that didn't make it to the charity shops before lockdown last year.

food stocks originally against possible Brexit shortages, then against lockdown shortages, and now just a policy of having roughly a month's worth of staples in hand. When the lockdown started last March we had to employ a certain amount of ingenuity to get groceries, fruit, veg and eggs via wholesalers, food boxes from Marks and Spencers, and the kind efforts of friends. Once I managed to get supermarket deliveries arranged everything suddenly became so much easier.

letters and parcels which have been delivered, which we leave 'quarantined for a number of days unless they look urgent

the usual stuff like shoes, coats, scarves and gloves, packets of batteries, tool boxes, the cello, djembe, saxophone and glockenspiel and such-like that everyone always keeps in their hallway. 

Ah well, that will be something for March.

Letterbox gifts are an amazing idea! I have just ordered a letterbox gift of wine for my father (he never reads my blog so he won't find out - unless this is the one post he decides to read?) I hope the wine tastes reasonable, and it is ridiculously expensive, but it was irresistible - they have put the wine into a specially designed flattened bottle so that it will fit through a letterbox.

 How clever is that!

I have also frequently bought flowercards from https://www.bloomsofguernsey.com/ and they have always been amazing and entirely worth it, which is why I have included the website.

Yesterday was the first time I went out for a walk since nearly two weeks ago. It was a bright sunny afternoon, after last week's bitter cold and this week's dismal rain. The weather makes such a difference! We didn't take the oxygen concentrator, and I still managed to walk round the block with only a few pauses - perhaps stopping to chat with friends who were also out for a walk gave me a usefil breather...

Touch typing is still a work-in-progress; today I started on z x , and ', and I find that if I remember to pay attention to what I am doing I do more and more 'proper' typing. 

It dies tend to be a bit error ptonr if I don't watjb what O am doinng closwly.

February's is 'drawing people'. On the assumption that sometime this year I am going to be able to get out and about with a sketch book I thought I would get into practice. I googled 'people at the seaside' and sketched from the photographs, and then amused myself while watching a Poirot on television.

     'Sketch' is the operative work here...

Monday 15th February - Nearly Lent

 Tomorrow I shall make pancakes, or rather drop scones, also known as Scotch pancakes, which I much prefer to the Crepe style ones. We shall consume a quantity of real maple syrup from the carefully hoarded supplies brought over from Canada several years ago.

Most of the recipes I see use eggs (I don't) and skip the butter (I don't).

I usually use the standard scone recipe - 2 oz butter rubbed into half a pound of SR flour along with a tablespoon of sugar, and enough milk to make the right consistency - about half a pint, but don't put it all in at once in case you wish you had used less. (Scones only need a quarter of a pint of milk). Hey, ounces, pounds, and pints! I've had this recipe a long time, so it's a good job my electronic scales are bilingual.

I'm wondering whether to try the American 2-ingredient biscuit recipe (1 pot yogurt, 1 pot SR flour) and just add enough milk to turn it into a drop scone consistency. Or the 3-ingredient scone recipe (1 pot fizzy lemonade, 1 pot cream, 3 pots SR flour). But I don't think we have any cream, so standard scone or 2-ingredient biscuit it will be. Experimentation might be the order of the day.

.........

I've been working on a sort of year-book - what else could one call it? I enjoy reading books that go through the year, so that one reads a chapter every month, taking one's time. I am currently reading 'One Woman's Year' by Stella Martin Currey (Persephone Books) which I like better than the '2020 Almanac; 'A Seasonal Guide to 2020' by Lia Leendertz which I read last year. I started  'The Cloister Walk' by Kathleen Norris in September 2019, which is more of a journal of Christian spirituality through a year. And then there is Miss Read's 'Village Diary' which is a novel telling the events in a small village back in the 1950s from the point of view of the Village School Teacher. 

It was 'The Cloister Walk' which alerted me to the pleasures of following a year through a book; the writing was 'as full of meat as a pudding' and I didn't want to read it too quickly. I found the Almanac to full of information that didn't interest me; tide tables and sunrise and set tables and nature notes of the hedgerows, and only a few of the recipes leapt off the page and say 'cook me, cook me'.

'One Woman's Year', published in 1953, is nearly perfect; six topics a month consisting of a diary-style essay, a recipe (excuse me if I agree so entirely with her description of the 'Pancake Pagoda Recipe' as a 'recipe of despair' that I have decided to read it as a work of fiction and not attempt!), a description of an excursion, the most loved, and most hated jobs for the month, and a very short anthology. And woodcuts. I love woodcut and lino print pictures.

                                            

I have refrained from reading ahead, and instead am putting together my own Year-Book-Companion. Following the example above, at the moment I plan to include any, or some, or all, of 

1. a diary entry, 
2. a poem,
3. a recipe, 
4. a cake, 
5. something to make, 
6. an excursion (not that I am going anywhere at the moment), 
7. something about nature/flowers/trees/gardening (of which I am mostly ignorant but since when has ignorance ever stopped anyone?) 
8. a Task for The Month, 
9. things taken from my commonplace notebooks,
10. A non-fiction item,
11. an evening prayer.   

I had hoped to make the list up to 12 items - then there would be a gross (that's 144 in old money), as my only disappointment so far with 'One Woman's year is that I would like there to be more in each chapter. And possibly the Pagoda Pancake recipe.

However my progress through January's chapter has slowed because I discovered this morning that I appear not to have saved yesterday's work. They say that re-writing is a major part of writing, so that's what I did.

 .........

A 'nature' comment for this month could be my pleasure at discovering that the clematis is not just a tangle of dead brown vines, but has green shoots. 

The layer of soil that James-the-garden-expert put on the flowerbeds seems to have encouraged the two clematis plants. One of my specifications for the garden when James sorted it out was that I wanted to have something new to discover every month; if nothing else happens in the garden in February the clematis shoots will have been enough.

  

Thursday 11th February - Bound to happen sooner or later...

 So yesterday, what with one thing and another, it was suddenly five-to-eleven and I had a zoom piano lesson to teach starting at eleven...

I had time for trousers and socks etc, but left the top half of me as nightdress and fleece cardigan. That gave me 30 seconds to run a hair brush through my hair. 

I remember remarking when I bought them that my new (back then) winter nightdresses were pretty enough for day wear, if only they had been made for that purpose. Yesterday they had a test drive! Luckily Wednesday morning's zoom lessons are a certain amount of piano lesson, and a much larger amount of chatting with a friend, so we were both able to have a giggle.

.....................

Yesterday was also the day our new printer arrived. It is a mid-range model, so not as clever as the one we had before, but slightly cleverer than completely dumb. We are discovering its particular idiosyncratic likes and dislikes as we go along. So far we can print things from the PC, but not from the laptops (we each have one) or telephones or tablets. Early days, early days...

......................

We have a number of Really Large Projects which have been fermenting slowly over the past year. Years. Several Years. Decades? The Bedroom Floor is going to be a major effort. What you can see are the remains of the cheap bedroom carpet that was already down when we moved in about 38 years ago. It has not aged well. Every few months I trim a little more off, so that I don't catch my toes in the frayed edge.  

The other holes in the carpet, by the door, across the foot of the bed, and along the other side of the bed, are covered by a selection of rugs which makes hoovering a nightmare. Oh, how I wish we could just cut it all away and have floorboards - but these are 1950s floorboards, cheap, splintery, knotty, warped, gappy - unsuitable.

We have a plan to use the remnants left from when we put down a beautiful wood floor all through the ground floor, up the stairs and on the landing. There won't be enough to do the whole floor, but the cunning plan is to just go round the furniture...

There is some precedent for this. Inspired by vague memories of a sitcom called 'No, Honestly' in which Pauline Collins papered the living room, carefully pasting the paper around the pictures while they were still hanging on the wall, 

I painted our bedroom (while Himself was away - 'no, please leave the painting, I'll do it when I get back,'). I couldn't bear another moment of living with the wallpaper. Of course the furniture was too heavy to move so I just painted around it. This was about thirty years ago.

Well, all went well until about twenty years ago when we rearranged the furniture...

You can see why that awful, depressing wallpaper HAD to disappear! But now I see it every time I enter the room, but at least it is in a dark corner, and not visible once I am in bed.

...........

I have finally got round to making some sauerkraut, the first this year. I use the recipe on the BBC Good Food website, but I'm more generous with the caraway seed and peppercorns. The ramekin and clingfilm is there to act as a weight to encourage the cabbage to stay submerged. Now it needs to ferment in a cool dark place for a couple of days. There is a valve in the lid so I'm not anticipating any explosions. I've used 500kg  of cabbage to get half a large jar - best to have plenty of headroom as the sauerkraut has a tendency to make a bid for freedom in the early stages.

............................

Yesterday I was thinking the cress would soon be ready to eat. 

 

Today it was all lying down in despair. Maybe it heard me. I have given it plenty of water and am hoping for the best.

Tuesday 9th February - morning - Snow!

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

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

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

.......

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

.........

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

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

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

  

Sunday 7th February - Vaccinations, events,

 Let's see, what has been happening since Tuesday?

Wednesday was surprise vaccination day for Himself - the local centre had an unexpected delivery of Pfizer vaccine so they were phoning round all the people on their list. 

No real side-effects apart from a sore arm for several days - sore enough that I was slightly apprehensive when I went for my vaccination on Saturday lunchtime. 'Good, it's not bleeding', said the nurse, who was actually a pharamcist. 'I don't like it when they bleed, makes me feel a bit ill'. What a job if you don't like the sight of blood - shades of the 'Doc Martin' series. I had the Astra-Zeneca one, and have had no side-effects (so far) at all.

We went round to my father's again on - must have been Friday, and this time we took the books, and this time he let down the string and hauled them up, to the interest of the lady in the ground floor flat. She knows my father quite well, so probably wasn't too surprised - she had been amused when he threw the last lot of books down to us when he had finished with them, a week or so ago.

We were promised snow this weekend, and it has been sleety drizzle all day. Most disappointing. Every so often the sleet becomes slightly snow-like, but everything melts on contact with the sodden ground. The only tiny scrap of snow that hadn't melted had been blown into a cobweb in a sheltered corner ofthe garden bench.

Oh! Now that it is getting dark, the sleet is snowier, and beginning to lie! I went to take a picture of the cobweb full of snow

 and discovered that ore snow had settled on top, and is beginning to cover the slats on the bench.

And the table, and the triffid

Now I want it to be tomorrow morning, and wake up to a world of wonder....

Patience.... 

The yoghurt pot seedy cake has been and gone - it was very good. The replacement, a yoghurt pot 'finishing a half jar of mincemeat cake' is down to a final lump. I used the same recipe as the last post, but reduced the sugar and replaced with dark brown sugar, and used slightly less oil, as the mincemeat has sugar and suet in it. I added a handful of dried fruit, and used mostly brown SR flour as the white four bag was nearly empty. It is good, but not AS good. But at least the eggs and yoghurt didn't go to waste.

The cooking 'topic' for this month is 'separating puddings' - I know a lemon one from the book that came with a Belling cooker decades ago, and a chocolate one that came from a fund-raiser church cookbook, and Eliza Acton's rich rice pudding which Delia Smith has included in one of her cookery books. I've jotted down another one from the internet, but it involved dessicated coconut which is not something I particularly like. I am mulling over a substitution - or maybe one can leave it out?

Meanwhile I have been munching Anzac biscuits, which do seem to contain coconut, and enjoying them. I should reconsider my dislike for coconut. They were a present from a friend, in exchange for lending some of our Wentworth whimsy jigsaws.

This tray of tea and biscuits is probably the only reason have I managed to get through writing up the lesson notes this afternoon to send out by email.

Learning to touch type as my January skill has been a very good idea - it has speeded up my typing and my accuracy. I should put that sentence into more of a past tense; I realize now, after having neglected both the book and the on-line tutorial that the skills are only shallow and need a lot of reinforcement - and soon.

So - February.....

February skill... hmm. I have an artbox of ink-drawing materials to investigate. I can see how getting a handle on how this could link in nicely with lino-printing...     
   

February craft - I have a summer top which I wish to convert to a dress by adding a skirt in the same material. The mindless knitted shawl is still a work-in-progress, as is the mindless crochet shawl, but the mitred square blanket is complete, including i-cord edging and all the ends sewn in.

 All the ends bar one. Have just dealt with that now. 

And February Spring Clean - I have just about finished the bathroom and loo - already! - only the bathroom floor and turning out the cupboard under the basin left. I may even get ahead of myself and deal with the hall-stairs-and-landing this month.

 

  

Tuesday 2nd February 2021 - Candlemas

I've titled this Tuesday, but it is actually Wednesday now - what with one thing and another this didn't get written yesterday.

Neither did my handwritten diary for that matter. Never mind - today can be catch-up day.

We have removed the last of the Christmas decorations - the outside wreath and tinsel, and the starry lights inside the front window. I am sad to see them go.

I came across this little rhyme

 If Candlemas day be fair and bright

Then winter will have another flight

If Candlemas day be clouds and rain

Winter is gone and will not come again

on a blog I follow. We should be in luck, as it did rain for most of yesterday, and there were only a few brief spells of sunshine.

We did go for a walk with the new oxygen concentrator in the morning even though it was dank and damp and cold. I pronounce the contraption to be an unqualified success. We (for Himself acted as porter) walked the long half mile to my father's flat and stayed for a conversation - us standing on the grass outside his first floor living room window. And then we walked back - a total of 2.2 km, heading for a mile and a half by the time you add in all the zigzagging across the road to avoid mad joggers and fast-moving infants on scooters. My legs felt a bit leaden by the time we arrived home, but that is probably the furthest I have walked since I don't know when - the Summer maybe? I am looking forward to going out again... soon. It is raining today, and the machine doesn't like getting wet so we will have to pick out time.

We had some books to take round to my father, but didn't take them on this trip in case we turned back half way. Sometimes he lets down a string from his window and we tie a bag to it, for him to haul up (all those years that he went sailing have their purpose still). We can play this game on another trip.

When we got back I found a message on the answerphone from the Surgery - I am to have my first dose of the Covid vaccination, or rather a Covid vaccination as I don't know which version they will use, on Saturday lunchtime. Whoop whoop! No news yet when Himself's turn will be, but it can't be long after mine as we are in the same group.

I made the last of the 'weird and wonderful' recipes that I have been experimenting with so far this year; it is an old favourite of mine - 

'Yoghurt Pot Cake'

empty a pot of yoghurt (ordinary small one) into a mixing bowl, use the same pot to measure in 2 pots of SR flour, 1 1/2 pots of sugar, 1/4 pot mild oil and 2 eggs and mix.

by itself this is rather a boring cake, but if you use vanilla sugar and a good couple of tablespoons of caraway seeds as I did you get seed cake. Or you could use brown sugar and cocoa powder and a bit of milk for chocolate cake, or mixed fruit and spices for fruit cake, or chopped apple for apple cake...

tip into prepared cake pan and bake in a fan over preheated to 170 C for around 35 mins.

At the moment I am baking everything in a little square pan, about 7-8 inches, which fits inside the basket of our Air-fryer. Even mince pies and scones and biscuits get cooked in it - I can fit four biscuits or scones or whatever, taken straight from the freezer with so little time and effort. It was a wonder purchase.

February's project is going to be 'separating puddings' - those concoctions that separate into layers when they are cooked. I know of three so far; Eliza Acton's rich rice pudding, a lemon curd pudding and 'North Sea Oil Slick', a chocolate pudding that makes its own sauce. 

I am delighted that the cats are at last, after 17 years together, beginning to tolerate each other

But this is where I like to sit. I didn't choose the settee for the cats to share. I was relegated to a different chair, not as comfortable or convenient. I need to give this situation some thought to reclaim MY place.

If it is now supposed to be Spring, then I suppose Spring Cleaning should be happening

Mole at the beginning of The Wind in The Willows

 I don't know that we will go as far as whitewashing anything, although there are rooms that need painting. I have decided to do one room per month; that makes it all more possible. Having looked at the downstairs rooms and despaired, I thought I would start with the bathroom and loo. I've a made a list of tasks and just get a couple done each week. I'll keep you posted; so far I have dealt with an outbreak of pink mould at the edge of the basin by removing it with determination and Cillit BANG.