Thursday 20th April - Half-way - That pesky delete button - Feinman - Asimov - Gardner

 I did some sums as I was feeling that I had A Long Way To Go with the current cross stitch. Hurrah - I'm half-way through - I've done about 800 stitches, and there are two blocks, of 330 and 460 stitches to go. Now it is looking more achievable.

It will be more than this, because my stitching tends to be make a dozen crosses, sigh, un-thread my needle and undo three crosses, thread the needle and make another dozen. Hopefully I will improve my success rate as I continue.

I really must stop trying to publish comments using my phone. The number of times I have caught the 'delete' instead of the 'publish' command is ridiculous. If I zoomed the screen before I started touching the commands that would save me - and you.

So, Jane-from-Dorset, I apologise to you for not publishing your comment which was as follows;

Jane from Dorset has left a new comment on your post 'Tuesday 18th April - Yogurt, Seeds, Quantum Physics':

Yes, do add some skimmed milk powder, it improves the quality of the yoghurt.

The Feynman diagram news sounds interesting-off to investigate as we spent a whole course using these at university.

As soon as one touches 'delete' it becomes impossible to rescue the situation, apart from copying the comments and adding it, but under my own name. Which I have done. 

The picture I found of a Feynman diagram was from a video on youtube. So if anyone is interested, have search. Feynman is mostly beyond me - in the sense that I'm not willing to invest in the time and mental energy it would take to understand the science. But I do enjoy his lighter weight books - I suspect as a personality one would have to consider him as a 'man of his time', but there's no doubting his giant intellect and lively writing style.

The first science writer that really grabbed my attention as Isaac Asimov - maybe better known for his science fiction, especially the Foundation series and the robot stories. But I remember reading 'View From a Height' sub-titles 'a brilliant overview of the exciting realm of science'. I am tempted to get a second-hand copy to see what made such a vivid impression.... maybe not at that price...

 And I leaned from a twitter friend (a real person - I do actually know him!) that you can buy Martin Gardner books - so there's another treat in store for Mathematicians. In fact the bookshop of the American Mathematical Society will let you have a complete collection, including his columns Scientific American for $99. Himself is Very Tempted.

I only managed to sow broad beans - white flowered, and crimson flowered, and peas on Tuesday. It was too cold. It's too cold again today; lovely bright sun, but that wind!

Tuesday 18th April - Yogurt, Seeds, Quantum Physics

 So here I am, tapping out notes for yesterday's piano student; she's spent the whole Easter break having a wonderful time with Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, and Einaudi and other things, and consequently forgotten how to play the various pieces we were working on for her Grade 7. Ah well. She's playing, and loving what she's playing which is the main thing. They often drop out when they are teenagers because there are so many other things filling their time, and bringing more instant rewards than unwillingly slogging through a Haydn sonata.

Really, I am watching the weather. It is a sunny, balmy morning, with a bit of a breeze. Yesterday I plotted the veg patch and went through my seeds;

These are the ones I want to plant today and I have promised myself that as soon as I finish typing I will be out there, even though the sun has disappeared and the wind is getting stronger. 

Tomatoes and flower seeds need to be started on the windowsills freed up by moving the salvia cuttings.

I've also been making yogurt; Heat milk until boiling, allow to cool to blood heat (just nice and warm when you stick  finger in to test). Put half a small tub of live yogurt into a wide-mouthed food flask and keep stirring as you slowly add the milk. Seal, and leave alone for 24 hours.

The resulting yogurt is rather thinner than I like (do you remember 'drinking yogurt' - not quite as thin as that) so I strain it.

Here's how much I ended up with - about two carton's worth. This batch is the texture of cream cheese, with a pleasantly milk taste.

As for quantum physics - I really don't have a clue. We (Himself and I) as sitting opposite each other at the table, working away on our respective laptops. I thought he was deep into the online grocery order, as he looked up with that glazed expression one gets after scrolling through myriads of little pictures to select the right kind of whatever. But no, his head was full of some recent development in quantum physics to do with solving a problem to do with predicting tunneling events... I was thinking of tunnels under the ground, but this is to do particle physics. We do have some hobbies in common. I can confidently say that this is not one of them.

Still, if this new development renders Feinman diagrams obsolete, does that release me from any obligation to try and learn about them?

Sunday 16th April - The quickest to clean dirt from under your fingernails

 

... is to do the washing up. Confess - you thought I was going to write 'is to make pastry'....

Anyway, my hands are all clean and pink now.

I've been gardening. My gloves were in 'the other shed' rather than in 'my shed', and anyway, I always say I'm only going to do a little bit and don't need my gloves, but as always one thing leads to another.

I've re-potted the salvia 'Armistead' and salvia 'hot lips' cuttings that have been overwintering on my windowsill. The Armistead ones have been flowering (in March and April? madness) and grown too big for their pots, so now they are in an unheated polythene greenhouse and I hope they will survive. The forecast looks hopeful at any rate. I think all the salvias in the flowerbed have died. They are not terribly hardy so cuttings are a good idea. 

And, with the help of Himself, I have tidied and arranged the vegetable 'garden' ready to make a start in the next few days, DV. It's looking like this at the moment (everything is always subject to change!)

Now I need to figure out what to plant where. The nearest pots need to have low-growing stuff, the two big black ones can have tall things and the others - anything, I suppose. The morning sun comes from where I was standing, and the afternoon sun from the left. The pots nearest the fence will be quite shaded - spinach? Lettuce, maybe?

The main idea is to have the rows no more than 2 deep, otherwise I can't manage to reach over to the ones in the middle, as I found last year.

Onwards - to tidy the horrors that you can't see to the left of the picture. Tomorrow, perhaps. 

Sunday 16th April - Contemplation - Meditation - whatever you call it

I host a weekly zoom church home group. If you are not familiar home groups, many churches encourage members of the congregation to join a midweek group for friendship, and also Christian study/prayer etc. 

Our's is not a typical on-line group as three of the members are non-zoomers, so stay in touch by weekly emails about the meeting that they didn't join. Another member doesn't do internet, so I post a copy of the email, and she zooms from a friend's house. It works for us.

Now that Lent has finished, and Easter Day is past, as usual we come to the question of what to do next?

We have decided to take a small chunk - a verse or two - from the Bible, and just sit with it in silence for 5 minutes, before sharing our thoughts. No notes, no carefully prepared questions to answer, no right or wrong answers...  

All the above is by way of introduction to what I am suggesting to you; take five minutes during the day (morning suits me) and contemplate something.

I plan to take one line at a time from The Lord's Prayer, and just think about it, and see where my thoughts travel to, every morning, starting from today. And my thoughts today were to share this idea with you. 

Now, you might not be a Christian - you might not be religious at all.

So, instead of contemplating 'The Lord's Prayer', line by line, you could choose a prayer or story from your own faith. Or, if you don't want to think about religious topics, I could make suggestions; here's a week's worth of hopefully neutral topics for contemplation;

A tree

A house

A fire

An apron

A flower

The sun

A road

Five minutes of slow, silent, contemplation, linking images and thoughts together. Why not give it a go?

 

 

Saturday 15th April - A Good Day for Doing Things

 First of all (and this was a tense twenty-five minutes) I have started the heel of my sock;

Step one was to watch the Arne and Carlos video on how to pick up the stitches for 'the easiest sock in the world' - they make it look so easy...

Like I said, it was a tense time, with many pauses to check a) I was doing it correctly b) that my jaw wasn't clenched c) that I had remembered to blink my eyes d) that I was still remembering to breathe. Eventually I managed to pick up all 60 stitches, 30 on each of my bendy needles as opposed to splitting it between four needles as they do. 

More tension, as I unravelled the contrast thread that I had knitted in where the heel was going to be all those weeks and weeks ago

Leaving the stitches (31 on one needle now - how did that happen? And should there have been 32? Oh well. I couldn't see any dropped stitches anywhere....)

The next problem was 'did I have enough blue sock yarn?' The knitted swatch was a trial for another project, on larger needles, and weighed 1.5g. The little nest of yarn that I had left for the heels was 3g, so not enough for one heel let alone two. The ball of multicoloured sock yarn weighs 24.5g, so that made the decision for me - contrasting heels!

And I'm off!

The heel is going to be the most peculiar shape, as you just follow the instructions for the toe in reverse.

 Arne, or is it Carlos?, assures us that it will sort of round itself out with wear. I believe every word he says, I think... 

I've also cleared another couple of overdue emails, prepared two more tubs for veg planting and done a good deal of cross stitching.

Now why is everything centred on the page, and refusing to left align?

Friday 14th April - weather dependent

What is weather dependent?

Whether we get any gardening done... yes, as a matter of fact. There was a brief spell in the afternoon when himself roared up and down the grass with the lawn mower (it was the lawn mower doing the roaring, I should explain). Heavy work, as the grass was long (first cut of the year) and not as dry as would make things easier. Meanwhile I sat on my trusty little trolley seat  and cleared out another couple of tubs ready for vegetable seeds - when? Ah, well, that's weather dependent too.

(No, this isn't me - I've snipped the picture from amzn)

I'm amazed that the trolley still supports my weight. We keep it outside, and every time I trundle it out from under the potting table I expect the plastic to have perished, and to find myself ignominiously dumped in a heap on the round.

Was it really last September and October that I was poring over seed catalogues...

This is the first year that my windowsills haven't been full of little trays of earth and hope... 

Whether I am feeling energetic or sluggish or downright dismal. This changeable weather can switch my mood as many times as the sun shines or the rain pours or the wind blows, often all at the same time and then where am I? 

Whether I get things done - I am slightly celebrating because I have dealt with a number of tasks  including sending the invoices for the next six week's piano teaching. There are too many Monday Bank holidays this half of term so I'm not sure how that will play out for the Monday evening pupil. Mostly we ignore them and keep on trucking through.

One thing I have started today is the cross stitching. I charted it yesterday (twice) and began stitching (twice)... luckily I had only done a row and a half and it was easy to unpick. So no heavy sighs or regrettable language.

The stand magnifying glass makes such a difference...

Whether a blog post gets written or not, no, nothing to do with the weather. More a case of suddenly remembering at 7.59 pm that I was hosting a group zoom at 8pm...