Thursday 12th October - lookee lookee!

The doorbell sounded (we have a Real ding-a-donga doorbell!) just we were sitting down for lunch; all the deliveries due for tomorrow arrived at once.

This was the most important one; the cross stitch!

The cross stitch and the 'flat present', a lovely book cover.

But the cross stitch

Just look at the derail! Ang designed it all herself, covering the whole area to represent the fields and sky, and then adding the tractor and other details on top. Isn't it lovely.

We are letting October and November run together to give us more time. Now to get down to charting the next picture...

 

Wednesday 11th October

Today, in chronological order

Snails have et my seeds all up - it's my fault, I left the packet in the cold frame (which is up on an old garden table) for a couple of weeks, and only noticed them today;

There are some seeds left in the packet, so I brought them in to dry out, and packed the packet into a bag. I'll just have to see what happens next year. I discovered them when I planted out my chard seedlings - what a difference starting them in paper pots made - so easy to pinch off the weakest seedling (poor things) and put the whole pot in the ground. Definitely the way to go.

I have bought some battery candles and am very pleased with them. They have a timer, so switch stay on for 6 hours, then switch themselves off. The next day they remember when to start and to stop. One candle has said 'it's bedtime' as I started it at 3.30am. The other one was started later, but not by much. They are the most realistic battery candles I have ever seen. Marks and Spencers, if you are interested.

Book club meeting tonight, which is why I am feeling so tired. They are all meeting in person; I join by zoom, and 2 hours is a long time to try and be a participant in a zoom meeting. The meeting starts with a pot luck bring and share food, drinks, dessert; people might say they'll bring the bread or the drinks or the dessert, but the rest of the food is always surprise contributions. I'd already eaten; it was fun seeing them share cold meats, prawns, quiche, salads, crisps, dates and biscuits.

Oh the book? We couldn't discuss in detail as not everyone had finished, and several people didn't want spoilers. 'What Strange Paradise' by Omar al Akkad. I couldn't finish it, as I knew, from the earlier chapters that there was going to be a huge tragedy, and didn't want to read the details. So I found a synopsis on the internet and read that. It's not an easy read, as in not at all 'cosy'. It's about refugees and asylum seekers crossing the Mediterranean Sea, ending up on a small island (probably based on Lampedusa). We had a lively discussion about immigration, and the drivers for people wanting to leave their homes and get to Europe. What's the solution? Answers on a postcard. Where do you start? With the chicken or the egg, if you see what I mean. The three words 'Stop The Boats' is just not an answer. Far too simplistic. There's no quick and easy solution.

I did some drawing during the meeting (there are times when several conversations are happening at different ends of the table and it gets hard to listen to one or the other)

This is some of what I could see (as well as people!)

      And then I caught the words 'those large windows with an arched top' and my pen sort of took over;

 

Further left there is a drawing of the host, but it's not a good likeness. In fact it's not good - I'm still practicing faces!

Tuesday 10th October - cross stitch news

 I had a card through the door regarding the missing cross stitch parcel; there was a fee to pay as it didn't have enough in postage stamps on it. I've paid, and it should be delivered on Friday. Is it just a coincidence that the card came through the day after I had a chat with the man at the sorting office who deals will the customer enquiries? I'm just happy it's on the way.

The 1 inch hexagon patchwork continues to grow. I had an idea to embroider the month and days on some of the patches;

I think this should work OK. I can add names of birthdays, anniversaries and so on as I go along. I did hit a snag; not insurmountable but still snaggy;

I can start the embroidery thread easily enough and do simple stitching while keeping the paper patches in place. But, I needed to remove the paper to end off the thread. That's ok for a patch already sewn on all six sides. However the patch I embroidered was at the edge. This made adding a patch to the unsupported edge a bit tricky. I shall try and avoid this in future. 

Yosemite

The red marker is where I was, the tartan one is where I have got to. I'm back on the trail now; the road carried on down, but the trail doubled back snd we are climbing up and up.

I'm pretty much on track, having managed 2200 steps yesterday (just over a mile).

And here's the view; judging by the group having a rest under the trees it's been a hot and dusty climb.

Monday 9th October

 A good start to the week...

I have deleted what used to be called twitter,  without regret, and after nearly eighteen months on Duolingo,  I've deleted that as well. It had become a purposeless chore, rather than fun.

I did the Monday ballet exercise (feet and ankles), and have achieved 1300 steps so far this evening, and I'm hopeful I'll be able to get an9ther 700 before bedtime. That is a mile, according to my virtual Yosemite hike.

Yesterday I was following the road through the trees, which seem to be thinning out.

In about another mile the trail will leave the road which will make a change. Imagine if I  was really hiking through Yosemite at one mile a day! I think I'd manage a bit further on a real hike. I walk at about 1 mile an hour these days on level ground, so maybe 2-5 miles might be possible, depending on the terrain. But that's with someone else carrying everything! I think I'll stick to virtual hikes.

That vegetable gloop I made in the slow cooker didn't get switched off until bed time -oops. It looks and smells OK, just rather darker and more concentrated than planned. I've portioned it out to use as a base for casseroles etc.

All labelled and in the freezer. 

I'm also dealing with scrap fabrics. This was my bridesmaid's dress at a friend's wedding 46 years ago;

I had already made a summer skirt from the long skirt, about 30 years ago, long gone now. This is all that remains of one sleeve and some of the bodice, with the leftover bits reminding me of what remains after picking a chicken. 

I'm covering a shoebox with scraps from a gardening catalogue to keep all the bits of fabric in.

I thought if I just did one side at a time I might not get glue all over the table.

Sunday 8th October - virtual walk, cooking, Collect for Trinity 18

Good day, so far (it's still afternoon)

Yesterday I walked about 1200 steps, no, to be strictly honest I accumulated 1200 steps on my step counter.

So I'm back on the road at Yosemite, walking between sequoias again along the top of the valley.

Most of the tomatoes I left on a sunny windowsill ripened, and there were various bits and pieces of vegetables in the bottom of the fridge, so I got chopping;

Two pans and a crock pot looks like overdoing things, but there was method in my madness; I sweated the celery, onion, carrots and garlic in the big pan, then transferred some to the smaller pan for lunch. I was tempted not to skin the tomatoes, but managed not to be lazy, so while the veg in the big pan was doing its stuff, I put the prepped tomatoes in the crock pot. Then I added the remaining veg and some stock, a bay leaf, sprigs of rosemary and thyme to the crock pot and set it going for a couple of hours. Once it is cool I'll portion it for casseroles and soups.

Meanwhile, lunch was the rest of the veg, simmered with seasoning and herbs, and, brainwave, some chopped balsamic tomatoes from a jar, plus the last of the chicken we had earlier in the week.

After about 10 minutes I added some chopped chard stalks (from the garden), followed by the leaves a coupe of minutes later, and zapped a Tilda 'Indonesian Fried Rice' sachet in the microwave rice.

 

It might not be even close to a proper 'nasi goreng' but made a very good Sunday lunch.

I was reading the list of ingredients on the back of the packet - for a processed ready meal food, it's not too bad. Not to salty either, maybe a bit sweeter than I like.

It's the 18th Sunday after Trinity today. This is the collect for the week in my old prayer book; 

LORD, we beseech thee, grant thy people grace to withstand the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil, and with pure hearts and minds to follow thee the only God; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

I was pondering this prayer; for many people the words 'follow thee the only God' could be anything from irrelevant to offensive, depending on what they believe. Should I therefore even post this? 

But yes; there is something to take from this prayer, for everyone, whoever, however, even if you need to skip over some of the words.  

We all struggle with temptations, however we frame them. Money, power, addiction, untruth, injustice - no, not just as things that happen 'out there' but things that we have to deal with inside ourselves. And surely it is a good thing to want to have pure hearts and minds? I'm not talking about the trivial stuff, the odd bit of vocabulary that gets used under stress. It's those dodgy moments when we do or say something that, on reflection, would have been better not done or said. Or the reverse - missed the opportunity ('through weakness, negligence, or our own deliberate fault') to do or say good.

Well, I hope we all manage to 'withstand the temptations of the world, the flesh and the devil' this week. 

      

Saturday 7th October

I managed 1600 steps yesterday; enough to walk down a deep canyon to a lake and back up the other side

and as far as - another carpark! I didn't capture a screenshot of the cars; one carpark looks pretty much like another. This picture is looking back to where I was yesterday, (virtually,  of course!)

Today was one of our meet ups with Son and Daughter. After the now-traditional waffles with bacon and maple syrup in the café we found a picnic table and played a game, or part of a game, of Catan. It can go on for hours so we set a time limi, otherwise it would have had possibly a nother hour to go.

Home again. I've actually d one quite a lot of the admin stuff from yesterday which makes me feel pretty pleased with myself. I think it's quite important to celebrate, in a small way, all the small victories of the day. I learned that 'Success breeds success' from some (probably psuedo) mindfully motivational selfy-helpy article, but it works quite well in practice.  Set the bar low, sez I; then you can move it up, rather than reaching for the stars constantly failing.

I've knitted the contrast for the forethought afterthought heel of my sock (yes, I meant to say that. An afterthought heel is inserted after the rest of the sock is done, and the forethought bit means that I've marked where it will be placed in advance). And I've gone an inch beyond. So that's a small win too.