Friday 7th April - yesterday and today

We did have tea outside in the afternoon; the almond macaroons I made on Wednesday afternoon. It was cold, sunny and cloudy by turns, but didn't start to rain until it was time to say goodbyes.

I had also made small panna cottage in espresso cups. I didn't serve them yesterday as in the end the macaroons were enough. So we had one each today at lunch time.

Oh me oh my! Why have I never made them before? I started with this recipe and also the instructions on the packet 

and gave it some thought. I always knew mental arithmetic lessons at school would come in useful (well no, not at the time, maybe). Eventually I  came to the conclusion that half a pint of 50/50 double cream and milk (semi skimmed) and 15g sugar and 2 leaves of gelatine should work. I heated the milk/cream/sugar in the microwave, added the soaked gelatine and stirred Intel it was all smooth.

 We had one each after lunch topped with a little whisky marmalade in lieu of fruit compote. Delicious! I will make this again, with a little more milk for a softer set.

It was a fitting reward for this morning's Adventures. 

Firstly, we used the in-post lockers to send a box of books to ziffit. Turned out to be as easy as making panna cottage.

Secondly, for the first time in three years, I went in to John Lewis for a look-see and to buy a birthday card. We were wearing FFP2  masks, but by walking very slowly and steadily I managed to keep my breathing under control. The store has undergone quite a major revamp since I was last there, and this is the first time I have been a-browsing for - literally - years.

Thirdly, while he was queueing to pay for the card(s) and other bits and pieces, I stood near the cafe and experimented with the drawing app on my phone

Fourthly, we took three bags of clothes and books and bric-a-brac to the charity shop.

In the afternoon we had tea and cake with friends in their garden. This time the sun came out and it was actually HOT! What a day.

I did a bit more to the cafe sketch just before writing this post.

Wednesday 5th April - Gluten-free surprise

 Family is dropping by tomorrow - what a lovely surprise! So we have found the 'round tuit' ("I'll do it when I  get a round tuit") and demolished the cobwebs from the bathroom windows, cleaned the bathroom, hoovered the kitchen, hall, stairs and landing (and our bedroom while the hoover as upstairs - after all, why not!?), polished the taps and changed the handtowels in readiness. 

Of course, we Always do All of this Every Week... well, to be more truthful, most weeks. There are only two of us, and sadly no cats anymore, so how dirty can the floors get? (I did work with someone years ago who couldn't sleep at night unless she had hoovered the whole house every evening... I  was speechless, in a mix of awe, admiration and disbelief)

We shan't be entertaining indoors (covid protection is still a thing for me) but there is always the possibility of someone needing the loo before their hour drive home.

Then I thought about needing to be able to offer a gluten free something to go with coffee or tea. Ah. We have got Nairn's plain and also chocolate chip oatcakes in the cupboard,  but not all oats are as gluten free as one might hope. And what about the malted barley syrup in the list of ingredients?

I've gone back to a tried and tested old fashioned favourite; Almond macaroons;

I followed the recipe, halving the quantities; 1 egg white, beaten to a foam, 110g ish ground almonds and 60g caster sugar. Reading on in the recipe, I saw that this also makes a traditional Passover treat if you add cinnamon to the dry ingredients and leave the mix as little balls rather than flattening them. I left out the cinnamon as I'm not sure if my visitors would like it, but otherwise carried on.

The advantage was that ten little balls of mixture fitted nicely into the air fryer, taking about 18 minutes at 160°C. I've rolled them in icing sugar as the recipe instructs and put them away until tomorrow. 

Have you seen tomorrow's forecast? Yesterday's sunny day was more of a trailer for the coming Spring. Today has been mostly cold, and tomorrow looks like being showery. Tea or coffee in the garden might not be happening after all....

Tuesday - a feast is as good as enough

I have had sticky toffee pudding and double cream for supper, after sardines on toast. We have discovered a brand of sardines called King Oscar;

I expect they are ridiculously expensive compared to 'the usual' but in my book they are worth the money as a treat.

As was the sticky toffee pudding. I wouldn't normally eat something as rich as this tin the evening so fingers crossed I don't have reason to regret this in the wee small hours.

Spring arrived in the afternoon. I had a couple of free hours and found the energy and oomph to get into the garden. Maybe joining Vicky (our gardener) was the incentive I needed. I sorted out the two small plastic greenhouses with Vicky's help, and cleared out the cold frame, and settled down on a sort of tro.ley-seat on wheels to clear 4 vegetable tubs of weeds and empty another couple of large pots ready for sowing some seeds soon. Pictures in a few days...

In consequence I have had a surfeit of exercise, fresh air and sun. If this weather can just last a little longer...

I think I have settled on April's cross stitch design, but I can never be sure until I have finished it and put in the post.

Monday 4th April - Exercises and sewing and Windows 11

 This arrived in the post for me today;

My Medal! I started 'walking' the South Downs Way on Boxing Day last year, and completed the 100 miles last Saturday. Let's be honest here; it s a virtual walk, where you enter the distance in km, miles or steps and you can see the course of your travels plotted on a map. I've been aiming for a daily step count of 2000 by the end of each day - not much, but it has kept me active. If I do NOTHING but sit and red, sit and knit, sit and watch television, my step counter can be less than 500 by bedtime. So this has been a real incentive to walk those extra steps, usually 'on the spot' while watching television.

One side shows Beachy Head, and the other King Arthur's Round Table, which is at Winchester. The disc rotates, showing various landmarks along the route on the Beachy Head side, and the names of the Knights on the other.   

I'm going to try talking my ancient and reluctant relative (mentioning no names) through a short and simple set of chair exercises several times a week as part of my phone call - I phone most days. He used to go to a proper Chair Exercise class, but that stopped some time ago. He has become a bit wobbly, partly s a result of being unwell recently. I'm no trained fitness instructor, but I reckon this will do us both good; - everything to be done gently and easily without strain...

1. wriggle your toes, flex your ankles up and down a coupe of times, rotate them a couple of times clockwise and then anticlockwise.
2. raise your foot and lower legs up, and lower a coupe of times (do each let separately)
3. see if you can get your knees to touch the underside if your table in turn (I know he is sitting in a chair with arms at his desk)
4. hands and wrists; stretch your fingers, and loosely relax them into a fist, repeat. Wriggle your fingers as though you were drumming them on a table top, or playing a piano. Bend your wrist up, then down, up, then down. Rotate your wrists one way, then the other, and repeat.
5. shoulders; raise and lower each shoulder in turn, make them go forwards and back in turn, rotate one way and the other.
6. neck; slowly look to the left, and the to the right, and then left and right again.
7. You're done! 

"Really," he said in surprise.

"Yup. was that okay?"

"Well, yes. More trivial than I was expecting. Thought you were planning something much more strenuous".

I hope he will be happy to do this again - it only takes just over 5 minutes. I'm assuming he did try and do it all - I did point out that there was no way I could tell if he was joining in, so he could just pretend and that would keep me happy...

This was the next thing to arrive;

A small brown paper bag with a square of orange furnishing material, two other scraps of cotton, a square of wadding and a little clear bag of notions - buttons, a ribbon, embroidery floss. It's for a project that our local eco group is running (not the church one but the town one), to collect embroidered squares and sew them into a sort of cloak.

I didn't choose the colours, and am a bit non-plussed. The theme is nature; they are the colours of the desert burned dry by the sun. I knew that if I ferreted through the bags that a friend brought round I would get lost, so just picked the first one.

Can you see what it is yet? 

No? Well neither can I.

So far I have made a quilted background - not quite finished. I've added some of the pieces of brown and dark red lace that Ang sent me right at the beginning of the postcard project, and I think I will add the green sequins she included, to be seeds. Then what? Belum tahu, as they say in Indonesia, one of the few phrases I remember from over 50 years ago. It means 'don't know'.

My Cross Country Collaboration has arrived with Ang, so I can post the picture now;

 I'm tempted to leave it small - it's meant to be daffodils on the banks of Ullswater. Oh, let's go large!

Finally - Windows 11 - a 'heads up' - I haven't moved to windows 11 on this computer, although my husband has moved his. It's ok, but a bit different to Windows 10. The messages 'inviting' me to upgrade are coming thick and fast now, and need careful reading or you will find yourself upgraded willy-nilly. That might be fine for you - or it moght not. 

Sunday 3rd April - To err is human...

The full quotation is 

'to err is human, to forgive is divine' - Alexander Pope

but it's the making of mistakes that I'm writing about. I was half, nay, three-quarters thinking of renaming this blog as 'A-couple-of-typos-from-home' as they are such a frequent characteristic of these posts. When the mistakes are underlined in red, then there's a chance of catching them. 

I was given a box of these brilliant pencils,, made by a company called Milan, although other brands exists,by my husband lat year or the year before;

red at one end, and blue at the other. Apparently they are quite a thing on the continent for marking up text, adding emphasis to notes. I hadn't realised, until I went hunting to see if I could buy a double-ended yellow-green pencil, because then I could colour in anything with just two pencils. No such luck; the other type of double-ended pencil is neon yellow and ordinary graphite - for writing and highlighting. I might get one anyway, sometime... I could do with red-pencilling a lot of what I write before releasing it into the world.

I have heard from several sources that quiltmakers in the Amish community incorporate a deliberate error in their famous hand-made quilts, because true perfection can only be attained by God. I agree with them in that true perfection can only be achieved by God, but I personally have no to add mistakes to my work just to ensure it was not perfect. 

I don't think I have made a perfect thing in my life, not sewing, knitting, crochet, nor playing, singing, teaching, cooking - nope, not a thing.

Here's my 'second sock' of the new pair. The pale stripe is where I shall add a heel later on, and the little yellow bulb-shaped safety pin is where I spotted ANOTHER dropped stitch, which I do something or other with needle and yarn later, to stop it running any further. (Top tip - whatever you are knitting, keep a crotchet hook, a size or so smaller than the needles, close at hand for hooking up dropped stitches). I have included a shot of the bendy double-pointed needles I am using; it means my stitches are across two needles instead of the more usual three or four, so I knit 30 stitches (I should count to see if I still have 30 stitches on each needle) before changing to the next spare needle to complete the round.   

The point of the picture being he dropped stitch; the other sock also has a strategic pin hanging onto a stitch that needs attention.

Of course, nearly everyone agrees that we have erred mightily as a nation, as a world, in a whole raft of major, serious issues. One of which is waste and climate and resources.

In a tiny effort to reduce paper towel usage in this household, I am using dish-cloth cotton squares to mop microwave spills, wipe worktops and so forth. These cotton squares were originally meant for a patchwork blanket, but I am NEVER going to finish it. 

Even after having taken a number for my own use, I will still have about three dozen left over. They are made from recycled cotton, and are around six inches square, and all probably have at least one mistake in them. They are perfectly hygienic to use as long as they don't hang around too long. (remember the stinky floor cloths from the broom cupboard at school? Ugh) I chuck them in the laundry at the end of the day, or sooner if that seems a good idea. Just beware - they are NOT perfect!

So, if YOU would like some - 3? or 5? maybe - comment with your address (I won't publish your address) and I will keeping sending them out until they are gone.   

Saturday 1st April - Thurs, Fri, Sat, All's well that ends well

A couple of days have slid past in a haze of ....haziness...

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Foggy_Hills_%28Unsplash%29.jpg

I think it's one's age, or rather one's parent's age. If he's around 90 years old give or take a few years, then even if he's reasonably well, and reasonably active, and managing very well on his own, there are bound to be situations, events, things happening, which take time, mental and physical resources. They are not necessarily major, serious, or urgent, but there you go, and there they are, and there it all is (to avoid saying anything at all specific).

The last couple of weeks have been one such thing. 

Anyway, thanks to the wonders of the National Health Service, everything is fixed, sorted, and it is all 'as you were' now. I hope. Until the next time. 

However it all takes its toll. For me, it resulted in days, or weeks maybe of total immersion in Freecell and Suduko on the computer I discovered exactly how much they bore me now - a couple of games and I am thinking 'why am I doing this?', shut the program and move on.

I have finished the March Cross Country Collaboration and it was posted yesterday - I won't post a picture of my stitching as I am not sure if Ang has received it yet. I'll leave you with a clue;

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed—and gazed—but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

William Wordsworth, of course.  There is an entry in Dorothy Wordsworth's diary about the daffodils too.

Actually, that picture of misty hills at the top of this post gives me an idea for April... although maybe it's not seasonal enough. What shall I do for this month's picture????