Tuesday 17th August - One day follows another

I could share my news with you - if there was any news...

I guess the news on TV, especially re Afghanistan, is enough for now. There are various aid agencies trying to get some kind of help in - Oxfam, 

Here are a couple of suggestions lifted from Twitter;

  

Also how to pray for the situation? What to pray for? I found this a good read; I follow the www.ibenedictines.org blog, and here is today's post;

https://www.ibenedictines.org/2021/08/16/how-do-we-pray-about-afghanistan/

Dame Catherine writes a good deal of sense.

So that's that part of today's blog...

Otherwise my days follow themselves one after another. This is the week I am starting to get my act together regarding preparing for the term ahead - I know it is still August, but early in September I will start teaching those Grade 8 students and I ought to be able to play the scales even if I can't manage all of the pieces! Today I made a start on re-learning the Debussy Arabesque no 1 which I used to be able to play, and hopefully will soon be able to again.

I'm still knitting;

 wristlets this time. These come from a book called 'weekend knitting', and indeed I knitted two pairs over the weekend. I started because Best Beloved commented on how cold my hands were - in August!

In the process I have learned to do 'wrap and turn short rows'  to create the shaping. If you look carefully across the palm, you will spot two places where a ridge of knitting branches into two ridges halfway along, to give the extra width for the hand. There's clever, boyo. When it came to finishing, you pickup stitches along the first row onto a spare needle, and then knit them together in pairs with the ending, so you have to wrangle three needles at the same time. A bit fiddly, but then it means that you have knitted the edges together so that you don't have to sew them together. 

Why two pairs? The first pair were an exact fit, so I made another pair on slightly larger needles. Perfect.

I almost can't wait for Autumn because I am so pleased with them, and judging by the weather at the moment I won't have long to wait.

I'm going back through the 'Learn to Draw in 30 Days' book. It is pleasing to compare the first time and the second time I do each lesson.

I could see the point of the skills in this lesson, first time around, but thought that the picture of a rose, which is a decent version of what the book shows you to do, was horrible, so false, so stiff. 

This time around, I had a brain wave, and starting with the stiff, artificial spiral drawn very faintly, I loosened up all the lines and was rather pleased with the result.