Wednesday 31st January

Will Spring start tomorrow? 

I do hope so!

Tuesday 30th January

Another driech day... but were warm and cheerful indoors. 

Fro drawing, I decided to do a lighting sketch of all the different plant foods I have eaten so far this week, and I wax astonished. Although I don't think I can score myself very highly for the sage, thyme, rosemary and Bay leaf that went into the lentil  and sausage casserole. Or for the constituents of a herbal tea.

I've included pecans by mistake, but I now I've finished my supper I could add add apple chutney (inside my home-made sausage roll), pickled onions (with balsamic vinegar) and picked beetroot. It all adds up very quickly....

The grapes look a bit shrivelled,  but actually, they are!

Today I heard about 'scavenger hunt decluttering'; that sounded more fun.

Here's my scavenger hunt list to complete in February! 

And a friend of mine wants my complete set of 'Miss Read' books - hooray! That will clear a shelf. I've read them too often now to want to keep them. Iused to read them as a sort of soothing and comforting way of taking 'time out' when everything was getting to be tooooo much. I've a couple on audible and I know if I start listening I will be asleep in ten minutes. 

Monday 29th January

We've been going through the freezer, doing a full inventory.  It shouldn't be such a big job as it is just three drawers, two-and-a-half drawers really...

Step One was listing contents and dates for each drawer. There were a few, but not too many surprises,  and for once everything was labelled and dated.

There are an alarming number of things that need to be eaten during February. I'm glad we found them all now instead of later. The other strange thing was that these items were mostly stashed in the bottom drawer; the top drawer would be easier to get at.

So, Step Two was shuffle the contents. Now, all the veg and short date food is in the top two drawers and the resting the bottom two drawers. And we have an up-to-date list!

What will happen is we will have a grocery delivery in a few week's time and everything will get stuffed in wherever it fits.... things will be moved about.... and chaos (the natural state of all types of storage) will once more return.

I wa the lucky one; I sat on a stool taking notes, while Himself kneeled on the floor and slowly froze his fingers.

Knitting 

I finished knitting the first side of the poncho, in that the wool ran out. I was aiming for something rectangular,  roughly 20" × 30". What I got was more nearly a square.. 

I have ripped it out and started again; fewer stitches (60 instead of 70) on larger heedless (7mm instead of 6.5mm). I'm getting 6 rows to the inch instead of 8, and I prefer the look of the knitting this time around.

Last remnant of version 1, laid on top of today's start on larger needles.

Drawing 

This week, maybe for several weeks, I'm going to work through Mark Kistler's Drawing book. I've done this before,  back in July 2021. This time around I'm going to use the aquarelle water soluble graphite pencils rather than a soft ordinary pencil.

I also want to have a really good go at learning to draw people, so I'm having a look at '5-minute sketches - people' by Peter Scully.

This first picture is from 2021;

Here are today's pages;

Moderating my vocabulary 

I am congratulating myself; after giving a very difficult piano lesson. 

e student had not been listening (again), hadn't looked at the work set (again), wasn't doing as I asked (again), and finally started just 'playing through' the piece (again). If it had been a face to face lesson I would have seized the music off the stand and thrown it on the floor. Instead, I picked up a random book and flicked through it until the noise ceased, waited a bit, looked up and asked if they were ready for a bit more of the piano lesson, or should we stop now?

We had a 'discussion', did three minutes of useful work, and then that was the end of the lesson.

Normally I would have gone into the kitchen afterwards using 'language', but this time - mindful of getting into practice for Lent, I managed not to!

Supper, chocolate o'clock, and chill out time. It should be okay as long as I don't watch or read any news tonight. 

Sunday 27th January - Three Bouquets

My husband bought three bouquets of flowers at the supermarket on Thursday. 

The first was for my father; from time to time I've asked if he'd like to have some flowers along with the porridge oats, eggs, bread, etc. This time he requested them of his own accord, so I'm pleased he likes them.

The second was for a friend who is having a stressful time at the moment with various members of her family unwell for different reasons. I was able to hand them over before the weekend. 

The third was for.... me! The daffodils from over a week ago were showing signs of going over, so I was delighted with a bunch of roses and carnations. 

Colouring the sketch was a bit of a challenge; I used some novelty pencils I was given at Christmas. Each one contains two colours of 'leads' inside, and they are labelled with the names of planets and other space features. You never quite know what colour you are applying!

Little Ghost Nebula is pale green and yellow

Earth is green and indigo 

Mars is red and orange

Solar Flare yellow and light red

Sunday 28th January

 I'm listening to David Suchet's audiobook 'The Bible in One Year. Currently the New Testament chunk for each day is from Matthew's gospel, and we've reacher chapter 15. I've selected a couple of paragraphs from the early part of the chapter;

Matthew Chapter 15 

1 Then some Pharisees and teachers of the law came to Jesus from Jerusalem and asked, 2 “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They don’t wash their hands before they eat!”

....

10 Jesus called the crowd to him and said, “Listen and understand. 11 What goes into someone’s mouth does not defile them, but what comes out of their mouth, that is what defiles them.”

12 Then the disciples came to him and asked, “Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this?”

....

16 “Are you still so dull?” Jesus asked them. 17 “Don’t you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? 18 But the things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart, and these defile them. 19 For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. 20 These are what defile a person; but eating with unwashed hands does not defile them.”

and I'm feeling well and truly 'seen'...

The list of evil thoughts seems a bit over the top for me and my circumstances, although, come to think about it, I have been if not Shouting at the news on TV, Thinking Very Loudly at it in fairly intemperate language. 

No, I think I need to pay more attention to my choice of words when provoked - to put it plainly, clean up my vocabulary. I think I may have found what I plan to give up for Lent, and I have a scant 2 weeks to get into training.

I'm not going to have a jar. I'm planning to just - not say it. I'll see how the next fortnight goes...

Saturday 27th January

 Yesterday our gardener came, for the first time since just before Christmas.  It was a lovely day, sunny, but still pretty cold due to the sharp edge to the wind; a lazy wind that would rather go through you than round you.

She's pruned and trimmed and cleared and tidied and although the garden still looks a bit bedraggled, it's a sort of 'end of winter' bedraggled rather than 'neglected and unloved' bedraggled. My order of variegated ornamental cabbages was delivered at the beginning of last week, and I lefts them outside sheltered from wind, direct sun and frost until she could come and put them in some pots. Now they are outside the patio door so I can enjoy them from indoors. 

We saw a fox trotting silently along a sort of animal track under the hedge just the other side of the fence at the bottom of the garden. I could only see it's legs but that was enough; too skinny for a cat, too quiet for dog.

They are a nuisance; they damage the underside of the cars chewing through the pipes. Our neighbours opposite all have barricades which they have to move, and then replace every time they go out;

It must be a huge hassle for them. The foxes use their front gardens as their own personal trackway, in preference to this side. 

We know of two families, one at each end of our road who love to feed and encourage the cute foxes...

I'm trying to do some kind of art every day for a month. This is actually a friend’s project; she said 'I want to draw every day, make me do it!'. Then she added, 'but how?'. So we email each other a picture every day. 

I'm more of a speed merchant. I find if I'm too 'finicking' the result is disappointing and rather dead. Also, doing all those olive branches reawakened my interest in watercolour. 

I've therefore abandoned drawing the mantelpiece and went wild, first with watercolours, and then with newly acquired water soluble geaphite pencils.