Monday 2nd November - who has got the biscuits?

 We have, due to a last minute misunderstanding the biscuits came home with us instead of wending their way westwards with the offsprings.

This is a double catastrophe, because that means they don't have them, and we do, and we will eat them, and I'm working hard not to get any more substantial than I already am. I've managed to stay at the same weight since March. Himself is able to eat as much as he likes without getting any heavier, and the offsprings have taken after, luckily for them.

We met up at the seaside, seeing each other for the first time since March! Oh frabjous day, calloo callay!

The wind was enough to take my breath away, walking into it, and I was glad to turn into an avenue of ilex trees leading away from the roar of waves churning at the shingle beach.  We were so lucky with the weather - having rained all morning the sun came out, fabulous. We even briefly zoomed my father so he could see us all...

Look at that sky! Look at those waves! I don't suppose you can make out 20-30 assorted wind-surfers and kite-surfers hurtling hither and thither in the distance.

I made Original Be-Ro Melting Moments

Heat oven to 180 and prepare two baking trays

Cream together 5 ounces soft butter (or marg - I used unsalted butter) and 3 ounces caster sugar (I keep a vanilla pod in my sugar jar so I did not add 1 tsp vanilla extract)

Stir in 5 oz flour and mix well

(This can all be done in a food processor)

Form mixture into about 24-30 little balls the size of walnuts - easier if your hands are damp

Roll in your preferred coating - I used crushed cornflakes, but you can use dessicated coconut if you like that stuff, or porage oats. You can top with a quarter of a glace cherry too.

Arrange on the sheets with room to spread, flatten slightly, and bake until pale golden brown - 10-15 minutes

and Chocolate Krispies

Melt together 100g chocolate (I used Cadbury's dark milk chocolate) and 50g butter and 3 tbsp golden syrup. Cool slightly before pouring over 100g cornflakes. Split between 12 bun cases and leave to set in the fridge.

Sorry kiddos, I meant for you to have them. That would have been several 1000s of calories, and two plastic tubs cleared out of the house.

Oh well, at least you can make your own now. 

Sunday 1st November - More stars

 I managed to ink up my linocut

I am SOOOOO pleased! 

I shall want to redo them, no that I have tried out using the cutting blades, and seen how they turn out.

The two fuzzier prints are monoprints which I made at the end to use up the left-over ink. I shall save them to guide my thinking when I redo the lino prints later.

I also chalked a star onto the path outside our house;

I'm hoping to keep this up through November. A friend has given me a tin of chalk stubs from her craft cupboard to get me started; I'm hoping a couple of boxes of pavement chalks will arrive soon.

It has been raining for the past couple of hours... that patch of tarmac should be all cleaned off by tomorrow. 

 

Sunday 1st November - so it starts with a star

Here we go again with http://nablopomoguideunofficial.blogspot.com/

Aim - to post to your blog every day for a month...

I've decided to create a list of hopeful and positive words for every day this month, and today's word is 'star'

specifically this one, which overlaps nicely with #inktober, as it is the first of an Advent sequence that I started yesterday

I also started lino cutting yesterday, having been turning over the process in my mind for several weeks, from design to cut to print

It's very much a 'learn as you go along' activity - you can read and read and ponder and imagine, but in the end you have to make a star-t.

One tutorial recommends making rubbings of the design as you went along which is an Excellent Idea. Already I have discovered that I needed to have done quite a lot of things differently - like not transferring too many designs at a time as they just get smudged, and not placing them so close together in an effort to make the pieces of lino last.

Never mind. I'm looking forward to creating the first prints in 50 years. 

November, even with the lock down, is looking to be a month of adventure. 

Friday 30th October - Restless

 Oh yes, I am feeling very restless these days, while at the same time full of a dead-weight inertia which mostly prevents the restlessness from turning into anything active.

So he goes off for a brisk stroll around the block, come wind, come weather, while I stay inside and do... well, not a lot. It's half-term, I tell myself. I can be on holiday for a week.

We did get out twice this week; on Monday, or maybe it was Tuesday, certainly wasn't Wednesday - what day of the week is it anyway, and does it matter? Anyway, earlier this week we went out, ignoring the dark clouds building up in the direction we were headed which was a nature reserve called Ebernoe Common. Halfway there it was clear that the rain which had just started wasn't going to stop, so we changed our plans and headed home along a different route to avoid the roadworks we had just spent ten minutes hanging around in.

This meant we passed a Quaker Meeting House called The Blue Idol, which I have always wanted to visit. 'Turn right up ahead', I called out, and he did, with admirable caution as the right turn was on the point of a blind bend.  

It was well worth the diversion. The rain eased as we parked in a space outside the building, and the small garden was open.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Blue_Idol_Quaker_Meeting_House,_Coneyhurst,_West_Sussex_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1523865.jpg

The meeting room wasn't open, but we were free to wander round the garden - very informal, very peaceful, just the sound of birdsong and dripping leaves. It was very like this picture - if you go on their website you will be able to discover more about this lovely place.

Today we went out again, even though it was raining and grim outside. I had read about this curious abandoned church in woods near Petworth, above a hamlet called Bedham. I recommend you follow up the link - turns out that this tiny hamlet was a centre of artistic endeavour, including the place where Elgar wrote his cello concerto - who knew!

It rained all the time, but since the church is deep in the woods, it wasn't too wet.

The church was built in the 1880s on a flat ledge of land just below the road, surrounded by trees. During the week it was used as a school for local children; on Friday afternoons they turned all the desks round to face the east ready for Sunday services.

  

The beech leaves were everywhere, totally covering the ground, a wonderful bright copper colour. Apart from a despondent donkey, braying in the misty fields below the place was deserted - until a family with three young children and a wildly over-excited labrador came tumbling down the path and began traversing the muddy slopes above the church - at least the children and dog took to the woodlands, the adults were more - adult.

I've been driven crazy by having 'restless legs' this evening - it happens every so often and is extremely irritating. A glass of ginger wine, some gouda and black pepper biscuits, and typing up this blog seems to have effected a cure.

I'm typing too fast and making the keys rattle, so it is getting hard to listen to the gang on 'Have I Got News For You' - time to stop...

 

Tuesday 20th October - To Do Lists

 I reckon to-do lists are 

amazingly useful

helpful to keep on top of things

a bit of a bore

a total waste of time

It all depends on - well - things. How I feel. How much I have got on my mind.

I've reinstated them after a couple of week's break, and it is noticeable that updating the blog has appeared as a recurring item for a while now. 

So, here I am.

What has happened since the last post - hmm. To quote number one daughter; 'same old same old'. Which is a hugely unsatisfactory answer to be on the receiving end of, but, actually, pretty much describes things. Piano teaching, trying to do a drawing a day, thinking about going out, but not actually making it out of the front door because it looks cloudy or cold or as if it is going to rain - life is full of excuses.

We did go and see the sea a few days ago - everything oddly shiny silver grey - depending on where you looked at the horizon, the sea was darker than the sky, or the sky was darker than the sea, or they were the same colour and you couldn't tell where one stopped and the other began. It was a Saturday afternoon - the weekend isn't a good time to go out as everyone else does the same, so walking along the path is a complex series of chess moves. It is noticeable how attitudes to giving each other 2m, or even 1m, space have changed over the past month. 

The garden is my salvation. It is full of surprises; the climbing nasturtium seeds I planted back in the summer and gave up all hope of have made it to the top of the fence, forcing their way through the passion flower vine and are now flowering. I suspect they have gone over the fence to next door for a quieter life, rather as Tigger the cat used to go next door (to the other side) when we had visitors with small children.

I shall go and walk the card round to the post box card once the paint is dry, and I've finished typing this blog post. Hopefully the threatened rain won't happen until after I get back.

Christmas is in my thoughts now. I shall have to think about teaching Christmas Carols again - Jingle Bells and all that - soon after half term. Half term will start on next Saturday afternoon (I have piano zooming in the morning); I have managed to get hold of a lino-printing kit which I am desperate to get stuck into (literally!) but am restraining myself until I have the time and space to give it my full attention. We did lino printing at school a hundred years ago when I was about 12, and I've always wanted to do it again. The sound of the roller going over and over the deliciously tacky ink - ahhh.

I've got 'making a list of ingredients for home-made mincemeat' on my to-do list, for the next grocery order. It's a long time since I bought mincemeat as I have found most of the brands, even 'luxury' once sadly disappointing. Th same goes for bought mince pies - but I'll eat them rather than go without!

Right. Time for the gallery - so if you like you can click away to something else now... 

I thought I'd see whether washing over the ink drawing would improve them;

There are two pages for the prompt 'teeth'; this is the second because I wasn't pleased with the coloured one of the zipper

 

This is the first picture I did for 'teeth'.

It was around this time I gave up on the prompts and decided to go my own way!

This is another one that I went over with wash to see how it changed - the first version is a bit further up

This page unintentionally left blank. I might fill it up with something at some stage...

We had beds a bit like this (smaller, and plainer) at boarding school, with horsehair mattresses dated '1943' in laundry ink at one end. 

The day before yesterday

Yesterday

and today. On youtube there is a version of 'My heart's in the highland' Robert Burns, set by Arvo Part, which is bleakly beautiful, and I copied this from the black and white photograph accompanying the recording as I listened.

Right. Coat and hat and gloves and scarf and go and post that letter.

Friday 9th October - where did the time go?

 I was looking at the last post and saw it was dated 30th September - I hadn't realised nine days had gone by.

October now. There has been a Harvest Moon (missed it - oh well) and INKTOBER is well under way - an internet challenge to post a picture created using inkpen every day. The official site has a list of daily prompts, and so far I am only one day behind.

Here they are

1 Fish

2 Wisp

3 Bulky

4.Radio

5 Blade

6 Rodent

7 Fancy

8 Teeth

I didn't like what I did for this one yesterday, so will be re-drawing it.

9 Throw

Haven't done this yet

But this leads me on to the cabled blanket that I was painstakingly trying to rescue in the last post. I tinked all the way back and then started knitting again, only to discover so many problems along the way that I decided 'enough is enough' and frogged it back to nothing.

I'm much happier with this; 

I've decided to use up all the wool (two balls) to make one giant granny square. It is already the size of a cushion, and I can just go round and round and round and round while listen to audio books and podcasts or watching television, using hardly any brain at all.

What else is new? I don't know. I feel as though I'm living inside a Barbara Pym novel, 200 or more pages of trivialities, none of which amount to much but taken as a whole, and written up in her style, magically become some kind of story. Only, as I am inside the story, I can't see the overall plot. 

I suppose there may be a story plot in this feeling of not having a plot - all a bit Alice in Wonderland.

Ah, yes, here's something to look in to - I've discovered that in the BBC sounds app you can find talking books to listen to. Alice in Wonderland is one of them. I shall make a cup of tea, or coffee, and have a listen.