Thursday 23rd February- keeping on top of things...

Crockpottery

We've had  crockpot soup several times this week. 

Mixed soup; I saved extra liquid from a couple of casseroles and mixed them together, adding a handful of dried Chinese noodles and some extra water. That was pretty good!

Vegetable soup version 1; random vegetables cooked up together with stock, tomato puree etc

Vegetable soup version 2; as above, but made up to the required quantity with more random vegetables and some water

Mixed soup version 2 will be on the menu in due course as I have just decanted four portions of chicken curry from the crockpot, and the leftover juice will become the basis of another soup in a day or so!

Cross-Country-Collaboration

We have both posted February's stitchery to each other today. I think mine has missed the last collection of the day from our local postbox, but should be on its way early tomorrow morning.

Altered Book

The Lent Course, 'of Mice and Marshwiggles' started yesterday, (on account of Lent beginning yesterday, of course!)

Here are my pages in my altered book for Day 1 and Day 2

At the moment the topic is 'Turning' - in Prince Caspian, the children have to turn from the wrong path to the less promising, but right path. Lucy, the youngest, is the only one who can see Aslan at this stage, and has to persuade the others to turn back. This will require some apologies for not following the right path...  

I thought I might try some blackout poetry; this page is in the introduction to the play, and it was easy to find words about wrongdoing and guilt.  

The Four Quartets by T S Eliot

This is what I call a 'really slow read', but I am finding it engrossing. I have the commentary open at the same time. I read a stanza, read the commentary and then re read. It is completely engrossing.

Tuesday 21st February - an unbelievable day

Why am I describing today as unbelievable?

To start with I came downstairs very early for me - just past 8 am. I vowed to myself I would NOT HAVE ANOTHER COFFEE until after I had written up and sent off the emails from yesterday evening's lessons. It's the only way to persuade myself to get on with them - at the moment those lessons, especially the last one, feel like quite hard work; remember this?

We've moved her lesson to Monday evening now... she's nowhere near as flopped as this, and neither am I, thank heavens. It's the 'learning a new piece of music' phase - many people, including me, find this hard graft. Last time we started a new piece, 'yeah, it's okay, I suppose' became 'this is my new favourite piece' the following week, so fingers crossed this yesterday's piece...

I've also 'decluttered' four book of jazzy piece, posting them off to be used as more interesting sight-reading material than the 'Right at Sight', 'Improve your sight reading' type tutorials. Hands up is you LOVED sightreading new music when you were younger. What, hardly anyone? I am SO not surprised!

I've posted what I neded to post to another friend, and handed over two beginner crochet books for another friend's daughter - hooray! Stuff getting done!

Then, I cooked a lovely couple of pieces of salmon for lunch... in the CROCKPOT! wowsers! I thought fish could not be done in the crockpot, but this is what you do;

Line the base with greaseproof paper in order to be able to lift out the fish.

Put your flavourings in first - a slice or so of lemon, a little onion (I had some spring onions that I thought would do), herbs, sliced up garlic clove, that sort of thing. 

Then put in your fish, preferably in a single layer. Mine were fillets, so I cut then in half, arranged the thick pieces side by side, and then put in the thinner pieces slightly draped over each other.

Add your cooking liquid to nearly cover the fish - water, or water and white wine, or vegetable stock, or vegetable stock and dry cider in my case, with more lemon juice, and leave it alone for either one hour on high, or two hours on low. Check by flaking apart with two forks to make sure it is cooked through.

Oh yessss! That recipe is a keeper!

While it was doing its stuff, I opened my Hobbycraft delivery from yeterday, and made a Spring reath for outside.

 It is the vine wreath from before, and a 'spring flowers wreath' tied on with fine string. I'm going for the 'casual' look.

After lunch it was 'modge podge' time - a bottle of this was also in the parcel. It's a paper glue that lots of the junk journalers use, so I thought I would give it a go.

Here's my front cover; as I plan to use this throughout Lent I thought this was an appropriate picture. 

Here's an experiment with collage, using four different squares of origami paper, near the end of the book. My word, but it quickly becomes a messy process...

And finally, a hurried preparation of two pages at the front, because I will be needing one of them for tomorrow! 

I suspect some flowers may be added to those little Japanese vases on Thursday... 

And now it is time to heat some soup for our supper, before we watch Richard Osman's House of Games...

Why is it that sometimes I am a whirlwind of activity and energy, and on other days even watching tv seems like a Big Ask.... very weird.

   

Monday 18th April - False Alarm

 I started by washing up after lunch, and one thing lead to another so I washed up the thingy that the washing up liquid and spongy whatsit live in, and behind the sink, and saw the state of the kitchen windowsill... this required something stronger than a wipe with a damp cloth so I ferreted among the various bottles under the sink for the 'power' cleaner. 

We keep the various types of cleaners in separate plastic crates, at least, they are sorted when we sort the cupboard. Over subsequent weeks they all seem to shuffle around somehow so it took me a moment to find the bottle I wanted. Horrors! It was dripping wet, and further inspection revealed that the crate was half full of water!  

I called the Man of the House to come and lift out the heavy crate and do the grovelling under the sink bit. The whole cupboard, apart from the crate of bottles, was bone dry. What must have happened is that when we had a leak at the end of last year, the water must have all been caught by the crate and we didn't notice. Usually the water from washing machine and dishwasher leaks goes straight through the gaps in the floorboards and into the six-foot deep void beneath our house (which is why it can take us a while to realise what is going on). 

Everywhere was bone dry so all is well. Meanwhile we took the opportunity to rearrange the contents of the other crates, including disposing of several ancient and rusting cans.

I can strongly recommend using crates to store things under the sink, even if you don't discover the leaks for month after the event!

Knitting

I have been doing knitting related activities of one kind or another most of the morning and afternoon. I have decided that this cardigan I made a couple of years ago really is a complete failure, and so am 'frogging' it to recover the yarn for something else.

'Frogging'?  Ripping it out, so called because of what a frog says; 'rip it! rip it!. Undoing the cast off edge was a tedious process, but watching the tail end of Shrek helped pass the time.

Noah's Ark

Friday was the raven, released by Noah after the rain had stopped.

Saturday was the dove, released by Noah after the raven didn't come back. The dove returned bearing an olive branch.  

I was expecting Easter Day to be a rainbow, but it is a family celebration - Noah and all the family.

I hope you all had a Happy Day on Easter Sunday - we have been so lucky with the weather. Our friends in Canada have just sent me a photograph of their back garden with fresh snow!  

Good Friday - 15th April 2022

 I came across this poem in an anthology complied by David Winter called 'The Master Haunter; poems about Jesus'

He is the Lonely Greatness

He is the lonely greatness of the world - 

    (His eyes are dim),

His power it is holds up the Cross

    That holds up Him.

He takes the sorrow of the three-fold hour - 

    (His eyelids close).

Round Him and round, the wind - His Spirit - where

    It listeth blows.

And so the wounded greatness of the world

    In silence lies-

And death is shattered by the light from out

    Those darkened eyes.

Madeline Caron Rock

It has been set to music by Arthur Benjamin, for unaccompanied choir.

Wednesday 13th April - Tea, coffee, ginger biscuits, bread and wine

 This morning our vicar came to bring us 'Home Communion' - the first time we have taken part in a service of Holy Communion since March 2020.

He's a good friend of ours and we have known him and the family since the 1990s when we joined our church. It's strange, thinking back to when the children were young, and our hair was still brown, and none of us wore glasses. Ah memory, memory.

So we sat round the garden table as the sun slowly warmed through the clouds. We started with tea, or coffee, and ginger biscuits made yesterday, catching up on church and family news. Then we pushed the teapot and mugs to one side, and brushed the biscuit crumbs off the table and continued seamlessly in the church service, complete with Bible reading (John chapter 14) and even a 'sermon' - if you could call it that, a few comments on the words. 

In the spaces between the prayers the breeze fluttered the table cloth, the glowing colours of the tulips and daffodils and the birdsong added to the sense of peace. A special moment, worth waiting for. 

In the past I always felt that a Sunday morning church service was incomplete without Communion being a part of it. Now, having waited so long, the experience seemed fresh and new, like the very first time over fifty years ago.

I didn't take photographs. But you can see the biscuits;

My husband makes them, to the recipe his mother used. I asked if he could make small ones as well, for me to have with morning coffee. So he did.

Noah's Ark; Hen and chickens

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not.

There are only a few windows left to open on the calendar.

We added hot cross buns and mini Easter eggs to this week's on-line order, and they arrived this morning. As did also an extra half-order due to a mix up. Our mix-up. We usually have next week's date booked and secured with a minimum order, and then go through adding and deleting as necessary, but if there are too many distraction during this process things can go wrong. So our fridge and freezer are overloaded with a week and a half's worth of food, and we sent our vicar on his way with our thanks, and some tomatoes, some lettuce and a pizza.

Tuesday 12th April - Printing, and posting, and other news.

 I turned the dining room table in to a card-making factory this morning

I though the cards with their black edges tooled a little sombre, and used some of the first tries for experimenting. 

Water colour worked a treat, until I discovered that although the stamp pad I used for test prints used waterproof ink, the actual printing ink was decidedly not! Colouring pencils will be the way to go. Something along these lines. 

The first six reached the post box this afternoon.

My 'bonus treat' when I am lino printing is to use up the last ink on the tray to make mono prints. I lay a sheet of A4 printer paper directly on the ink, and draw with a pencil. The pencils lines pick up the ink, transferring the design. You can get a more textured background by lightly smoothing the paper onto the tray. Next time I might skip the lino printing stage and go straight to mono printing! 

   

On Sunday evening I finished the jumper that I started back in December. It lay untouched for several weeks at a time, sometimes because I had more urgent things to complete, other times because I needed to work out how was going to solve the problems I met along the way (wrong yarn and gauge for the pattern for a start!)

I have been wearing it all day yesterday and today.

   Noah's Ark

Palm Sunday was always going to be a donkey! I learned an interesting fact on Sunday; donkeys were not thought of as such a humble ride back in Old Testament times; when kings arrived in a town they would ride a donkey to show they came in peace; horses were saved for war. If the king arrived on a horse then you could be sure his intentions were not peaceful.

"Lo, your king comes to you, triumphant and humble is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey."   Zechariah 9.9 

Monday - hares; "You shall not eat the hare, for even though it chews the cud, it does not have divided hoofs."      Leviticus 11.6

Tuesday - "Spoil was gathered as the caterpillar gathers."  Isaiah 33.4

So not a butterfly then!  

   
  

Thursday 7th April - Blustery Day

We've spent this afternoon 'wind-proofing' the garden; himself went out for a walk in the afternoon and found himself being gusted along by the wind. I don't know how that has affected his walking speed and distance; I suspect the going with the wind and against the wind may have evened themselves out.

I chased after the empty buckets roistering down the path and shut them into the shed, we've got the lid of the cold frame fastened tight, and have been out once again already to sort a wheelie bin that has got a bit over excited. 

Now dusk is falling, and great grey-pink clouds are racing across from north to south. We shall see what tomorrow brings.

I've spent most of yesterday and today sewing for the postcard project. Today I finished the stamp and stuck stitched it to the card, and this afternoon decided to add another small item. Pictures to follow after I'm sure that Ang has received it. That won't be very soon, as it needs to be packed up and posted first!

My orchids have all come into flower again, in spite of my very inexpert care. I'm fairly sure they should be re-potted and given orchid feed, but so far they have received nothing more than neglect and occasional watering.

 The pink and white orchids originally belonged to my godmother. She never really liked being given cut flowers 'they belong in the garden' or house plants 'I always kill them', but the orchids were a great success. Once we convinced her not to water them during the week, but to wait until we came at the weekend, they seemed to thrive. When the first one stopped flowering I took it home and replaced it with another, both bought from M and S. I think they brought her a lot of pleasure.

The yellow one came from a piano student. The first year it was very pale, almost greenish, but has transformed since then into this golden beauty.

They are all on the windowsill at the top of the stairs, so I see them every morning. I'm pleased to see there are so many buds still to open.

Noah's ark

yesterday; Sparrows;

Psalm 84 3 "Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, at your altars, O Lord of hosts.

Today - The Lion of Judah

"Do not weep. See the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered.

Yesterday; all about gentleness and care and safety, today, about strength and power.

Tuesday 5th April - Genius knitting techniques

Ok, this bit is all technical knitty stuff. Scroll to the bottom for Noah's Ark, and the mysterious door handles.

I have a definite antipathy towards sewing up the seams of my knitting. So, this jumper has been created without any sewing (apart from weaving in ends and sorting out the occasional dropped stitch or other weirdo stitch that appeared along the way).

Yesterday I finished the shoulders with a - wait for it - drum roll - 3-needle bind off - and was able to try on the completed body;

I've just pulled it on over the guernsey I was wearing because I was feeling too lazy to remove it first. I was mainly concerned that the neck was a good size. It is still on two circular needles, one for the front, and one for the back, and there's a long dangly bit of yarn draped down the side as well.

Here is a close-up of the shoulder seam.

I've done a sort of Norwegian stand neck, where you bind off the front stitches, and then knit an an inch extra at the back before binding off and sort of sewing the edges to the front. The thing is, I did an I-cord bind-off for the front and back stitches, and it has made such a great edge! I did test out the concept on a swatch first.

 How neat is that!

I started off wanting to knit this Elizabeth Zimmerman 'wishbone' pattern from 'The Knitter's Almanac', but soon realised that the yarn and needles I had were never going to match the pattern instructions for stitches per inch, whatever I did. 

So I turned to my Elizabeth 'Knitting Workshop' and started modifying as I went along...

In the end, following her 'recipe' (she's not one for precise patterns!) I knitted 'in the round' to the armholes, split the front and back and continued separately in garter stitch for the length of the armholes. The sleeves have been knitted 'in the round' and still have the needles in (luckily I found I had two circular needles of the right size and length!)

The instructions for the Norwegian neck, I-cord and 3-needle bind-off are all in 'Knitting Workshop';

here's the Norwegian neck from the book;

 The other techniques are freely available  on the internet, but I couldn't find anything about this type of neck..

The next task is to fathom out how to join the sleeves into the armholes - I can see another 3-needle bind off  event, and I have done a couple of trials. The end is in sight - I should be able to wear this thick, warm woollen jumper around the time Spring arrives for real! Apart 

I can recommend 'Knitting Workshop'

It is expensive (around £25 new) but full of interesting ideas, techniques and patterns included how to knit a jumper without a pattern, and also how to knit the famous 'Baby Surprise Jacket', knitted entirely in one piece and then folded and sewn across the shoulders. I have made two of them so far, one over 33 years ago for my son, and one for a friend's grand daughter. 

by StarKnits  Flickr
picture from 'Baby Suprise' link above

The original new sheet style publication

Noah's Ark today

'The wolves shall lay down with the lamb'- Isaiah 11 6. 

The door handles? Daughter moved into her first bought, not rented, flat at the weekend. There have been some surprising discoveries since moving in; but that none of the internal doors had the latch fitted (the sticky out bit that protrudes into the door frame and holds the door closed) but only the handles screwed to the sides of the door was probably the most unexpected.

Oh, were you expecting a connection to Noah's Ark? I did put a comma in the statement at the top of the blog... 

Monday 4th April - Chaotic, or creative?

For such a small picture, the stamp is taking a lot of sewing! It has been an interesting little project from start to finish; finding the subject, and working out how to recreate it. I've a couple more decisions to make before I take it out the of ring, press it, cut it out and sew it on to the 'postcard'. (I'm fairly sure I am not giving anything away by showing the reverse!)

I took the picture to show how quickly a small amount of embroidery sewing can overflow out of its box. I've already moved up a size once. The purple felt on the right holds all the part used lengths in different colours. As long as I am gentle I can ease out the colour that I want without worsening the tangle. I have found that the felt is just fuzzy enough to hold the threads securely when I fold it over. 

I think it took less than a week for the neatly arranged items in the box to become and apparent muddle of threads, pens, bits of cloth and notes.

Mind you, I do tend to work in a cluttered environment. This is what the piano looks like;

The laptop is open ready for the next zoom, and I also have a cheap Kindle fire to the right, out of shot, in a clamp, so that the students can see me in one screen, and my hands on the keyboard in the other. Although they can glimpse a little of the chaos on the dining room table right behind me, and the cat asleep on the chair even further behind me, they overall impression  they receive is more orderly than the reality!. The pink stickers stuck along the piano lid, above the metronome, are invaluable; I use them to mark up my copy of the music as they are playing so that I can go back and ask about the F# in bar 6, or sort out a rhythm problem, or comment on how neatly they managed that tricky bit at the top of the second page...

The state of the dining room table appeared frequently in the days when I was teaching about 10 or more class lessons a week, on clarinet, ukulele, recorder, djembe drums, samba drums and keyboards as well as upwards of 30 piano pupils. Within a few weeks of term starting I used to give up trying to clear the accumulation of lesson plans and song books and administration folders and let it all pile up until the next break.

Somehow, I was nearly always at the right school on the right day with the right instruments, equipment and lesson plans; there were a few narrow squeaks; for example the first five miles of the journey for two schools were the same, but on Wednesdays I had to remember to turn right at the roundabout, but on Thursdays go left. Then, for some reason, they would swap days...

Noah's ark

yesterday - worms

Job 21;23-26 

One dies in full prosperity, being wholly at ease and secure...

Another dies in bitterness of soul, never having tasted of good.

They lie down alike in the dust, and the worms cover them.

These worms look remarkably athletic. Do you think they may have been 'charmed'?

    Video of the UK worm charming championships from Willaston in Cheshire

today

Isaiah 51;8 - Moths

For the moth will eat them up like a garment,

and the worm will eat them like wool;

but my deliverance will be forever,

and my salvation to all generations. 

Friday 1st April - April Foolish weather

 No, I'm not posting any April fools - there have been plenty of of them on twitter etc.

And anyway it is now too late - half past five.

Yesterday it began to snow at about ten minutes to four. And finished snowing at about five minutes to four. I began a piano lesson over zoom with a girl at four, who lives about half a mile away, which was almost instantly derailed when she announced it hard started snowing and could she go and bounce on her trampoline in the garden in the snow? Before I could frame a response, the snow stopped. Like that. So we carried on with the lesson.

Half an hour later I was having a chat with a group of friends, again over zoom. Some live in Scotland (no snow), some in Norfolk (some snow) and two live a couple of miles away from me, and - it had just started to snow! For about five minutes and then stopped. Mad.

Today it has been alternating between snow, sun, sleet, snow, more sun, hail (!), sun.... and again bitterly cold.

I've stayed indoors, watching the weird weather and staying close to a radiator, all wrapped up in a blanket. The cats have felt the same way. I feel for them - our bathroom is chilly with the wind in this direction, but they have to go outside. 

Yesterday and today, with the weather being so cold, I opened a packet of 'Cold Warrior' tea. Whether this is to fend off a cold in the head or cold weather I don't know.

Eucalyptus leaves, aniseed, lemongrass, chilli, echinacea, peppermint

  Not as pretty as the flowery one from Wednesday, and a strong smell of Olbas Oil, which was slightly worrying. I love the smell of Olbas Oil 

 Ahhhhh

but I'd never have thought of drinking eucalyptusl...

Once brewed, the flavours mellowed. I'd drawn the curtains so I don't know if the weather improved, but I felt better for it. Perhaps because I'm not actually unwell?

Noah's Ark for Friday

It's a jackal, or maybe a fox - I think it depends on which Bible you use. This is the King James Version;

1. 17 For this our heart is faint; for these things our eyes are dim.

2. 18 Because of the mountain of Zion, which is desolate, the foxes walk upon it.

3. 19 Thou, O LORD, remainest for ever; thy throne from generation to generation.

4. It's not a good idea to try and make sense of random verses taken out of context... but verse 19 seems a good one to hold on to.

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Wednesday 30th January - Tea Day

I ordered some speciality fruit teas at the weekend, and they arrived today.

I'm partial to a herbal or fruit or spice tea blend in the middle of the day and I'm down to the last few Pukka teabags, the remnants of a mixed box. But this time I wanted to have loose tea, rather than a pre-measured quantity, and some more interesting mixes. I think I've found what I want;

Enter 'Bedknobs and broomsticks' blend from the Bird and Blend Tea Company!

Apple pieces, hibiscus, elderberries, chamomile, nettle, rose petals, rosehip, lavender, freeze-dried strawberry, jasmine blossom, natural flavouring.

Tregina, Makoidees, Decorum Sadis Dee!  This is delicious! I've ordered several other packets, in small quantities, to try. So far I have resisted the Creme Egg Tea and Hot Cross Bun Teas... one can Go Too Far with inventive combinations of ingredients.

Noah's Ark

Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow;

We start with what might be Guy the Gorilla - let me just check; no, possibly not;

"The king had a fleet of trading ships at sea along with the ships of Hiram. Once every three years it returned, carrying gold, silver and ivory, and apes and baboons."

Of course not; the nose is quite different n a gorilla. The ships in question were bringing treasure to King Solomon; "King Solomon was greater in riches and wisdom than all the other kings of the earth." 

I think this might be a raven; yes;

 Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds!

And tomorrow will be a dove;

I said, “Oh, that I had the wings of a dove!

    I would fly away and be at rest.
7 I would flee far away
    and stay in the desert;

That sounds like a cue for a song;

Tomorrow? I hear you ask. I was momentarily confused as to whether it was Wednesday or Thursday. Ah well.