Wednesday 31st January

Will Spring start tomorrow? 

I do hope so!

Tuesday 30th January

Another driech day... but were warm and cheerful indoors. 

Fro drawing, I decided to do a lighting sketch of all the different plant foods I have eaten so far this week, and I wax astonished. Although I don't think I can score myself very highly for the sage, thyme, rosemary and Bay leaf that went into the lentil  and sausage casserole. Or for the constituents of a herbal tea.

I've included pecans by mistake, but I now I've finished my supper I could add add apple chutney (inside my home-made sausage roll), pickled onions (with balsamic vinegar) and picked beetroot. It all adds up very quickly....

The grapes look a bit shrivelled,  but actually, they are!

Today I heard about 'scavenger hunt decluttering'; that sounded more fun.

Here's my scavenger hunt list to complete in February! 

And a friend of mine wants my complete set of 'Miss Read' books - hooray! That will clear a shelf. I've read them too often now to want to keep them. Iused to read them as a sort of soothing and comforting way of taking 'time out' when everything was getting to be tooooo much. I've a couple on audible and I know if I start listening I will be asleep in ten minutes. 

Monday 29th January

We've been going through the freezer, doing a full inventory.  It shouldn't be such a big job as it is just three drawers, two-and-a-half drawers really...

Step One was listing contents and dates for each drawer. There were a few, but not too many surprises,  and for once everything was labelled and dated.

There are an alarming number of things that need to be eaten during February. I'm glad we found them all now instead of later. The other strange thing was that these items were mostly stashed in the bottom drawer; the top drawer would be easier to get at.

So, Step Two was shuffle the contents. Now, all the veg and short date food is in the top two drawers and the resting the bottom two drawers. And we have an up-to-date list!

What will happen is we will have a grocery delivery in a few week's time and everything will get stuffed in wherever it fits.... things will be moved about.... and chaos (the natural state of all types of storage) will once more return.

I wa the lucky one; I sat on a stool taking notes, while Himself kneeled on the floor and slowly froze his fingers.

Knitting 

I finished knitting the first side of the poncho, in that the wool ran out. I was aiming for something rectangular,  roughly 20" × 30". What I got was more nearly a square.. 

I have ripped it out and started again; fewer stitches (60 instead of 70) on larger heedless (7mm instead of 6.5mm). I'm getting 6 rows to the inch instead of 8, and I prefer the look of the knitting this time around.

Last remnant of version 1, laid on top of today's start on larger needles.

Drawing 

This week, maybe for several weeks, I'm going to work through Mark Kistler's Drawing book. I've done this before,  back in July 2021. This time around I'm going to use the aquarelle water soluble graphite pencils rather than a soft ordinary pencil.

I also want to have a really good go at learning to draw people, so I'm having a look at '5-minute sketches - people' by Peter Scully.

This first picture is from 2021;

Here are today's pages;

Moderating my vocabulary 

I am congratulating myself; after giving a very difficult piano lesson. 

e student had not been listening (again), hadn't looked at the work set (again), wasn't doing as I asked (again), and finally started just 'playing through' the piece (again). If it had been a face to face lesson I would have seized the music off the stand and thrown it on the floor. Instead, I picked up a random book and flicked through it until the noise ceased, waited a bit, looked up and asked if they were ready for a bit more of the piano lesson, or should we stop now?

We had a 'discussion', did three minutes of useful work, and then that was the end of the lesson.

Normally I would have gone into the kitchen afterwards using 'language', but this time - mindful of getting into practice for Lent, I managed not to!

Supper, chocolate o'clock, and chill out time. It should be okay as long as I don't watch or read any news tonight. 

Sunday 27th January - Three Bouquets

My husband bought three bouquets of flowers at the supermarket on Thursday. 

The first was for my father; from time to time I've asked if he'd like to have some flowers along with the porridge oats, eggs, bread, etc. This time he requested them of his own accord, so I'm pleased he likes them.

The second was for a friend who is having a stressful time at the moment with various members of her family unwell for different reasons. I was able to hand them over before the weekend. 

The third was for.... me! The daffodils from over a week ago were showing signs of going over, so I was delighted with a bunch of roses and carnations. 

Colouring the sketch was a bit of a challenge; I used some novelty pencils I was given at Christmas. Each one contains two colours of 'leads' inside, and they are labelled with the names of planets and other space features. You never quite know what colour you are applying!

Little Ghost Nebula is pale green and yellow

Earth is green and indigo 

Mars is red and orange

Solar Flare yellow and light red

Sunday 28th January

 I'm listening to David Suchet's audiobook 'The Bible in One Year. Currently the New Testament chunk for each day is from Matthew's gospel, and we've reacher chapter 15. I've selected a couple of paragraphs from the early part of the chapter;

Matthew Chapter 15 

1 Then some Pharisees and teachers of the law came to Jesus from Jerusalem and asked, 2 “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They don’t wash their hands before they eat!”

....

10 Jesus called the crowd to him and said, “Listen and understand. 11 What goes into someone’s mouth does not defile them, but what comes out of their mouth, that is what defiles them.”

12 Then the disciples came to him and asked, “Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this?”

....

16 “Are you still so dull?” Jesus asked them. 17 “Don’t you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? 18 But the things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart, and these defile them. 19 For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. 20 These are what defile a person; but eating with unwashed hands does not defile them.”

and I'm feeling well and truly 'seen'...

The list of evil thoughts seems a bit over the top for me and my circumstances, although, come to think about it, I have been if not Shouting at the news on TV, Thinking Very Loudly at it in fairly intemperate language. 

No, I think I need to pay more attention to my choice of words when provoked - to put it plainly, clean up my vocabulary. I think I may have found what I plan to give up for Lent, and I have a scant 2 weeks to get into training.

I'm not going to have a jar. I'm planning to just - not say it. I'll see how the next fortnight goes...

Saturday 27th January

 Yesterday our gardener came, for the first time since just before Christmas.  It was a lovely day, sunny, but still pretty cold due to the sharp edge to the wind; a lazy wind that would rather go through you than round you.

She's pruned and trimmed and cleared and tidied and although the garden still looks a bit bedraggled, it's a sort of 'end of winter' bedraggled rather than 'neglected and unloved' bedraggled. My order of variegated ornamental cabbages was delivered at the beginning of last week, and I lefts them outside sheltered from wind, direct sun and frost until she could come and put them in some pots. Now they are outside the patio door so I can enjoy them from indoors. 

We saw a fox trotting silently along a sort of animal track under the hedge just the other side of the fence at the bottom of the garden. I could only see it's legs but that was enough; too skinny for a cat, too quiet for dog.

They are a nuisance; they damage the underside of the cars chewing through the pipes. Our neighbours opposite all have barricades which they have to move, and then replace every time they go out;

It must be a huge hassle for them. The foxes use their front gardens as their own personal trackway, in preference to this side. 

We know of two families, one at each end of our road who love to feed and encourage the cute foxes...

I'm trying to do some kind of art every day for a month. This is actually a friend’s project; she said 'I want to draw every day, make me do it!'. Then she added, 'but how?'. So we email each other a picture every day. 

I'm more of a speed merchant. I find if I'm too 'finicking' the result is disappointing and rather dead. Also, doing all those olive branches reawakened my interest in watercolour. 

I've therefore abandoned drawing the mantelpiece and went wild, first with watercolours, and then with newly acquired water soluble geaphite pencils. 

Friday 26th January

 Yesterday I started reading 'The Edge' by Dick Francis. The one about the train full of owners and horses travelling across Canada, stopping at various places for racing.

This morning I finished it. It was a reread; I've probably read it three or four times before over the years since it was published in 1988. He had a genius for depicting the inside workings of different professions; just off the top of my head I remember glass blowing, the jewellry business, two books centred on painting... in 'The Danger' he seemed to know far too much about how kidnappers might operate.

He made no secret of how his wife helped; (from Wikipedia)

His villains are always very villainous, his protagonists always very clever, insightful i1ngenious. Later books were not as violent as the early ones, as I remember. 

This time I was reading it because of one character, the lady in her final weeks of illness who, because she was confined to bed, was always available to relay telephone messages (no mobile phones back then). She's a minor character, but made a strong impression on her.

24 hours to read a book? It can happen....

This afternoon I completed a sheet of bookmarks for the World Day of Prayer. The earlier version was in the nature of a trial. Today I started again from scratch, and I'm happier with the results.

Thursday 25th January - a rant because I'm rather cross

 Readers who have been following my adventures in needlework over the past two years doing an exchange with Ang will realise that I will have an interest in the goings on with the Royal Mail (let along the monumental scale of the current Sscandal and ruination of people's lives unfolding day by day with the Post Office system).

We have been successfully posting packages to each other roughly every four weeks with the latest additions to our shared embroideries / cross stitch projects. Only once has a package been delayed.... and it turned up eventually.

Over the past few years we have all watched as prices for postage go up, and services go down. A bit like the way everything in the supermarkets from chocolate bars to the number of sheets on loo rolls is reducing as the prices rise.

Today I read an article about how the Royal Mail was seriously planning to cut the number of postal deliveries. Starting with stopping Saturday deliveries (if you get what I mean!). Then I read about propossls to reduce deliveries to three days a week.

The thing is, the Royal Mail is desperately struggling to balance the books... since 'open season' was declared on mail delivery, surprise surprise, all the lucrative parts of the business that used to subsidise the more costly services (delivering to rural or remote places, for example) the whole enterprise was bound to start losing money.

It's the last sentence in this paragraph from the article that brought me to the boil...

Since when are dividends paid out before all liabilities are settled?. Isn't this exactly how various privatised industries (think water, for example) have got into such an under invested state?

This the closing paragraph of The Guardian article

It does seem to me that the current structure is not working... at least, it's not working for us.. but hey, what do I know? I'm just a customer....

I'm going to find some chocolate. 

Wednesday 24th January

Here's my November December January cross stitch picture;

As usual the finished piece was not quite how I imagined it;

Somehow the curves of my sketch didn't quite work out as I'd planned, but I'm happy enough. I stitched the background with nearly all the different greens I had in my stash. I had promised myself NOT to buy any more embroidery thread, so I only ordered two skeins.... oops

Having done all that mish mash of green for the vegetation, I couched brown perle thread and a metallic filament to make the frosty outlines of holly leaves (new technique for me) and then embroidered cream or white perle plus metallic filament - I wish I had a sharper needle, but didn't have a combination of large enough eye AND sharp point to hand. It took a bit of thought to work out how to do a holly flower... 

Finally I added the berries - three or so perle stitches set close together. No filament. I had broken a couple of needle threaders by then and run out of patience. 'Enough is as  good as a feast', I thought!

The theme was the 'sans day carol'; here are the words

1. Now the holly bears a berry as white as the milk,  (I'm sure I learned the word flower, not berry)
And Mary bore Jesus, who was wrapped up in silk:

Chorus: And Mary bore Jesus Christ our Saviour for to be,
And the first tree in the greenwood, it was the holly.
Holly! Holly!
And the first tree in the greenwood, it was the holly!

2. Now the holly bears a berry as green as the grass,
And Mary bore Jesus, who died on the cross:

Chorus

3. Now the holly bears a berry as black as the coal,
And Mary bore Jesus, who died for us all:

Chorus

4. Now the holly bears a berry, as blood is it red,
Then trust we our Saviour, who rose from the dead:

Chorus

I had intended to use 'The Holly and the Ivy', but after I had done the holly leaves I decided against trying to couch down the outlines for any more leaves!

I love the way many of the Christmas carols tell the whole 'Jesus' story, from birth to resurrection. This one doesn't mention Christmas at all, so covers the tie from November to now quite nicely!

Tuesday 23rd January

 I nearly missed the next season from my book, this is the title page and you can see the illustrator is Rececca Warren;

And here is the heading for the season  with one of her lovely little drawings;

When semi-retirement 'struck' back in March 2020, I decided to have a real go at learning to draw and paint. Two books made a huge difference to me;

Firstly, 'Drawing With Children' by Mona Brookes, which I tripped across in 2019.

I was impressed by the 'before' and 'after' pictures showing how her students improved after her lessons. 

I didn't study the whole book in detail, but what I did learn is how there are only 5 different types of line or shape in drawing, a dot, a circle, a straight line, curved line and an angle

and everything can be broken down into these components.  I've seen this principle in other drawing books as well.

The other thing I learned was How to Look at things, to really see what was there.

I enjoyed working through these copying exercises. The idea is you copy what is printed in each box into the one below.

They very quickly go from simple to complex, and make one start observing very carefully. 

And here's the second book which convinced me that it was possible for anyone to draw;

I bought this with a fair amount of scepticism on kindle, but stuck with the program,  doing about 15 mins most days.

Here are some extracts from the first lesson. It's a really well explained step-by-step approach

It doesn't take long before you find yourself drawing a house, or trees, or an eye, followinghis instructions. 

His style is quite cartoonish, but once you get the idea it is not hard to adapt it to your own preference, rounding off edges or adding details.

So there you are; the right instruction books did it for me. After that came copying other people, like Rebecca Warren drawings, and watching YouTube....

Go on! Have a go, find a softish pencil and some paper.... (do a bit of Mona Brookes copying, and then try the circle...then try an orange...then eat the orange!).

Ordinary drawing is not really a talent, any more than day-to-day doing the washing up, cooking a basic meal, or the 101 tasks we have done so many times we don't need to think about. It's about looking, and drawing what's there, not what we think is there. 

Monday 22nd January

Good evening, or morning, or afternoon....

(It's evening now for me)

I totally disrupted our grocery housekeeping system by ordering stuff from ocado, delivered this this morning. Normally the grocery shopping order is entirely under Himself's control, indeed fro Waitrose, but every so often I get a hankering for a bit of domesticity and the result can be a bit chaotic.

This time I arranged 'my' delivery for today, so Himself has had time to recover and adjust before working through our usual order for Wednesdays. 

It's because I don't, I can't sensibly go into the supermarket. If we went together we'd look and browse and chat about the foods 'how about some ... this week.... oh, those fish look good.... what about some .....?'

I'm looking forward to cooking a few casseroles and enjoying some stir fries this week, as a change from our usual fare.

This afternoon I starting working on the olive branch book marks for the World Day of Prayer on Friday 1st March. I reckon to get 8 to a page. After watching some YouTube videos I set to work;

This is just a trial sheet, but if it works out I shall be really happy and stop there. I've done it on the drawing/painting/doodling page of my diary aka 'One Book to Rule Them All' so I will have a record of my efforts. 

The cross stitch went into the post this morning. It was originally November's piece; what with one thing and another both Ang and I ended up not starting until January. I think it was February last year when we started the cross stitch collaboration, and we have space for two more months. Then what? We are both thinking about the next project...

Sunday 21st January - Prayer

Our church is embarking upon a Year of Prayer, which all sounds rather daunting. 

It was launched last week, with a sermon encouraging us to just try and connect with God, even for just a few minutes, three times a day. But how? It doesn't have to be perfectly scripted, or in a special place, we were told. Just remember, include Him in, say a thank you. That's a start.

This week was more of the same, using the Lord's Prayer in whichever version you are familiar with. I remember when sat still and meditated each phrase in turn every morning for 5 minutes by my stopwatch (I know my limitations only too well).  It was a wonderfully calming way to start even the busiest of days.

At the moment I am slowly reading a couple of books on prayer, on an 'as and when' basis, and I'm also using Angela Ashwin's book of 1000 prayers every day to 'get me started'. Sometimes reading the prayer is the beg8nning and the end of it and sometimes I stay with it a bit longer.

The books are a golden oldie, 'Letters to Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer' by C S Lewis, and a newer book, recommended by a friend (and on offer for 99p on kindle until the end of January) called 'Praying like Monks, Living like Fools' by Tyler Staton.

I think I can manage a few minutes, a couple of times a day, to do the equivalent of sending a text or WhatsApp to God... and hopefully catch an idea of what He would like me to pay attention to in return! 

Saturday 20th Jan

 The appointments diary for today was completely empty. Nothing there.

So we did pretty much nothing. It wasn't the weather for doing anything.

I've read some more of 'Of Stone and Of Sky' by Merryn Glover. I'm finding the structure of very short chapters, some only half a page long, compelling. They are all switching from one point of view to another, pieces in a puzzle surrounding the disappearance of a main character. That's not a spoiler, by the way; the very first chapter is a euology for him.

I love the cover too. Do I recommend it? Yes, but it's not an easy read, in the sense you have to work at it. I am reading a few chapters at a time, so that I can stay with the story. It's 'rich' fare, like some cakes and deserts and main courses are rich. I think I will suggest1 it to The Book Group when it's my turn to choose book.

At the same time I'm also reading 'The Common Years' by Jilly Cooper which is also a series of very short pieces. This time there is no puzzle, as it is just extracts from her notes and observations of the changing seasons, the people she meets, and the regrettable behaviour of her dogs as she walks round Putney and Barnes Commons. Again I'm only reading it in smallish chunks, a, to use a food simile again, it's more like eating chocolate digestive buscuits. You've got to know when to stop! 

I'm a bit sad about the illustrations. From the little I can make out I think they would have worked in a larger format book, but in my standard size second hand paperback it's too difficult to work out the details. 

I was given a bunch of daffodils on Thursday. They are coming into flower as I watch.

Friday 19th January

 Yesterday I  did housework again. The gasmanwas due to service the boiler, and I stood there looking at the kitchen floor and thought ' there's no way I am letting any one into the kitchen with the floor in that state. 

While Himself was out doing the weekly shopping for my father (Waitrose is at its quietest at 8.30 on a Thursday morning) I took a deep breath,well, several deep breaths and set to. 

It's slow work for me but by the time he came back from shopping,  sorting out and restocking my father’s fridge and dealing with a few incidental little jobs I had swept and washed the floor. 

As I put things away I spotted some 'essential window wipes' as well. How long had they been there? I unsealed the packet and tried them on the kitchen door window. Amazing! I'm impressed; the window was left clean and streak-free.

In the afternoon I slowly swept the hall, stairs and landing and reappeared downstairs with a horrifying heap of cobwebs and dust. I did have to ask Himself to extract the dustpan and brush from the cupboard as I wax  completely done in.

Two piano lessons and an evening zoom finished off the day.... and so blogging didn't get a look-in!

Today I've taken it very easy. I did write up and email lesson notes, and do some cross stitch collaboration. The end is just an hour or so away, and it WILL be in the post this weekend.

Will this be last Christmas card of the season?

It was sent by friends in Poland, postmarked a few days before Christmas. I've added it to the pile, ready for me to go through them all, checking addresses and updating the Christmas card list, before sorting and recycling them. A job for February. 

I'll be able to deal with the 2022 pile at the same time; I was a bit dismayed to find them all lurking in dark corner a few weeks ago.

Wednesday 17th January

 I'm so behind that quite soon I shall be back at the beginning of the month.

My friend and I do a 'monthly' notebookswap; we each have a notebook in which we write things... things we've done, seen, drawn, places we've been to... it's like a long, long letter/conversation.  

'Bear with me,' she emailed. 'I promise I will send the book soon...'

It arrived today! I managed to get through the sellotape without tearing the paper, so I'll use that to post the other half of the swap tomorrow. 

Ang's cross-stitch collaboration arrived a few days ago, and I've still got a few days of stitching to do on mine, (as long as nothing goes wrong). This is supposedly the November piece... we agreed to give December a miss. I'm just hoping I can post this before the beginning of February!

We've two more spaces on the cross-stitch collaboration to fill. I'm determined to be more timely for the next space.

Meanwhile, tomorrow morning will be full of fresh opportunities to be productive. 

Tuesday 16th January

 The rest of my Ladybird 'What to look for' books, Spring and Summer, arrived today, secondhand and beautifully packaged, from Country House booksellers. They both look well-used, one has a boy's name written in it, the other 'Borthwick'. I guess that could be a name or a school. I do love wondering who had the books before me.

I've put them to one side for now. I'll keep dipping into the winter one until the end of February. 

Yesterday was the beginning of the next microseason in my Nature's Calendar, the year in 72 seasons book.

I think I might have noticed that snowdrops have three petals, but I didn't know enough about flowers to know this is relatively unusual. Ours began to flower just before Christmas so they must be an early flowering variety. They will keep going for most of February. 

Pearl earrings, of the type in the famous 'girl with a pearl earing' portrait were known as scheetropfen in German. 

In France they are sometimes called violettes dela Chandeleur - Candlemas violets.

At long last I have tackled the East-facing bay windows in the sitting room. The sun shines in all morning, so every mark is very obvious. I've done three of the five sections, and then had to stop. I'll have to ask Himself to do the other two sections as they are tricky to get to. 

I won't know how successful I've been at removing streaks, spots and smears until the sun shines through tomorrow. I washed the glass with hot water with a spot of fairy liquid, rinsed them twice, dried them and finally polished the glass with a vileda glass cloth. Surely that should have been enough? I notice I had added 1000 steps to my step count by the time I finished.

Every time I walked into the sitting room I paused to admire my handiwork. Clean windows make such a differ ence!

Next will be the bay windows in the bedroom. These also face East and get the morning sun, so also annoy me all morning if they are dirty! 

I'll leave the windows at the back of the house for a few weeks as the sun doesn't reach them at the moment. Maybe it would be a good idea to allocate a few windows to each month; kitchen in February, back of the house in March, landing and bathroom in April? Sounds like a plan.

Monday 15th January

 It's almost impossible to stay away from posting something about the news with eventually giving way....

I read yesterday that the Immigration Authorities or Home Office or whoever it is in this country that makes these decisions allowed 38 people from.... Rwanda.... to be granted asylum in this country since 2013, and 6 of these after the deportation deal was signed in 2020 (article in The Independant newspaper). Rwanda has, of course, been declared to be a 'safe' country by this parliament. Huh.

And then there is the ongoing Post Office Scandal.... and suddenly this government is ready to jeopardise the system of Law (which is, I agree, expensive, slow, cumbersome and expensive) but rushing through legislation to get the compensation payments to the victims. What about the victims of other scandals?

compensation for people who received contaminated blood...

Compensation for people jailed for decades on the basis of flawed and slipshod evidence 

I could go on and on and on....

Then I read this in my Commonplace Book for 2022;

It's a quote from a Dr Who episode in 1977; Dr Who says

'You know, the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit the facts. They alter the facts to fit their views.'

Sunday 14th January

pilgrimage

/ˈpɪlɡrɪmɪdʒ/   (don't you love these weird and wonderful symbols to aid pronunciation!?)

noun

1. a pilgrim's journey.

   "he wanted to go on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela"

   Similar:

   religious journey

   holy expedition

   crusade

   mission

   trip

   journey

   excursion

   yatra

   hajj

verb

1. go on a pilgrimage.

   "thousands pilgrimage there every year"

You may remember I am 'walking' along the Camino de Santiago de Compostela. I say walking - I'm using a virtual app where I enter my step count at the end of the day, and then my little flag is moved along a map to show me where I am.

As I don't go out and walk any distance (I find I can't walk fast enough in cold weather to stay warm unless I am wrapped up like a Michelin Man) my daily step count tends to be 2000, give or take, unless I've been stirring a cake mixture, winding a ball of wool, chopping vegetables, or playing fast, dynamic piano pieces. That can quickly add a few hundred steps - but I allow them because it is a form of physical activity! These means I meander along the 400+ mile route at about one mile a day.

A pilgrimage isn't a race, though; it's a journey, and if I were really travelling along the road at one mile a day I would have plenty of time to observe, ponder, investigate, consider;

to 'hear, read, mark, learn and inwardly digest' 

(to quote one of the Advent collects, and, incidentally, our long suffering English teacher at school).

Here's where I am now. 

Pamplona is half a mile ahead, so I should be there sometime this evening. It's ften quite difficult to work out what season it is from the photographs. Warm and sunny; the grass to the left is bleached dry, the fields to the right are ploughed, dry and crumbly. Summer, perhaps? From reading the blog posts of people who have really walked the camino, it seems that the best plan is to get up before dawn, set off as soon as it is light, and try and reach your overnight destination before lunchtime After then it can be too hot to walk; looking at this path I can imagine it would be unbearable in the afternoon sun. 

I'm not as alone on this 'walk' as the picture would suggest. I am part of an endless stream of pilgrims, all travelling in the same direction. Because it is a virtual app, people can convert running, jogging, swimming, cycling, even dancing, exercising, buying groceries, and doing housework into distances to add to their journey! Imagine that! 

It seems that almost any everyday activity can contribute to one's progress along the path!

Well, this is Sunday and no doubt you are waiting for the 'religious' bit. Here is comes;

I want my 'real' pilgrimage to be towards Christ who said 'I am the Way, the Truth, the Life'. 

Knowing that there are so many fellow-pilgrims going along the path in their own way, not racing each other, but travelling a their own pace, is a great encouragement.

There you are, that's the religious bit. (mine's the marker with the tartan, from one of Ang's cross stitches pieces for our cross stitch collaboration)

    

 

Saturday 13th January

Books

I am currently reading tooo many books again. I finished Gaudy Night, but I  have replaced it with several more

Stone and Sky by MerrynGlover is a Christmas book 'Stone and Sky', set in Shetland,  from a friend. It is very intriguing, and still in the 'setting up the storylines' phase, with hints to the future story, all because of what happened - what happened? It's a bit 'wait and see' - in the past. I'm finding the switching between people and time interesting rather than annoying in a different book unlike The Stranding which is the book club choice. What is the difference in the writing to cause that?

 I'm also dipping in and out of an ancient paperback by Jilly Cooper called 'The Common Years'. It's an informal diary / collection of observations from walking her irrepressible and out-of-control red setter on Putney Common from 1972 until 1983. Hilarious. 

Finally 'The Plowmen's Clock, Alison Uttley is another 'dip in and out' book; a collection of beautifully written reminiscences of rural Derbyshire in the early years of last the century.

Nigel Slater's 'Christmas Chronicles' still have entries for January.  10th January was all about marmalade....

Then there are several already queued on the tbr pile. Oh dear!

Knitting needles

And yet another set of 6.5mm circulars!  

No seriously,  although this is an extravagance, it is also a useful extravagance. I have like using these needles tor the ongoing mitred square blanket 

I'm knitting with dk yarn on 4.5mm needles in garter stitch, and it feels about right for texture and 'squish'. It's the sort of thing I can add a bit to when I want some really mindless knitting. It's not very portable, but lovely and warm to drape over my lap in this cold weather while I click along.

So, as I was still finding the straight 6.5mm bamboo needles I was using for the shawl I recklessly purchased some 6.5mm circulars from the same manufacturer as those blue needles. 

I find circulars are great for knitting flat pieces; you never ever drop or loose the other needle when you reach the end of the row. This w-i-p is the poncho using the yarn I was given as a Christmas present. I plan to use it as a warm wrap for when I am reading in bed.

Piano Playalong

Inspired by mystery 'knit-a-longs' and 'crochet-a-longs' I have started a mystery 'play-a-long' for a few piano students. The idea is that I send just a short extract of a piano piece each week, so by Easter they will have learned to play the whole thing without stress or pressure.  

I kind of shot myself in the foot by accidentally sending the whole piece in week 1; they all squeaked and backed away saying it looked Far Too Difficult! Well, I  agree, page 2 does look terrifying at first, second and even third glance, but at the pace I was planning to go they would have found it surprisingly easy. 

Luckily the real week 1 extract has reassured them somewhat and they are ready to give it a go. Week 2 is easy too... and week 3.... then comes week 4! It will be fine!