Just some rambling

I made my Christmas cake today, for the first time in several years actually. And it's a full-size one because I couldn't find my notes on the ingredients for the slightly smaller cake I made last time, and I really couldn't be bothered doing all the arithmetic again! It's such a faff when you're basing calculations around the number of eggs while simultaneously tweaking the ingredients (omitting mixed peel and glace cherries, that kind of thing). But it's done now and it smells nice. 

I also went for another very quick walk to get a dose of sunlight and fresh air. It was pretty chilly and some of the puddles still had ice around the edge. I like ice patterns, there's so much variety.

Not a very good picture - I thought had a better one than that but it might be on my actual camera rather than my phone. I'm trying to get into the habit of carrying my camera with me regularly again.

Red sticks in the sun (not exactly poetry)

A clear, bright day on December is a wonderful thing. I'm trying to make the most of what daylight there is and get out as much as possible, even if it's only a 20 minute walk. I love low sunlight in winter - all the colours look so rich, especially that red dogwood.

Once again I'm blogging from my phone and finding it quite tricky to be honest - aside from apparently having huge clumsy fingertips, I seem to have a really short attention span and forget what I'm trying to type if I can't see it all at once. I was actually going somewhere with this. Nope, gone. Perhaps I should compose blog posts in haiku form.

Right, I'm boring myself now, I'll leave off boring the world at large and go back to trying to find out about SQL as the Boy has just muttered something about it.

Today's adventure

I'm experimenting with blogging from my 'phone. It's like trying to write a letter while pushing it through the letterbox. That is not today's adventure.

Technically Miss M's adventure rather than mine, but as I have my own concert band past, I rather enjoyed it.  It was the regional heat of the Scottish Concert Band Festival, and their school band got a Gold Plus, which automatically sends them to the final in Perth in the spring (I say spring but I am familiar with Perth in March, it could easily be snowing).  Miss M is very excited. I've got to say, they played beautifully. I'm really impressed with the quality of music at her school! So it was worth getting up at dark&gloomy o'clock, to get her there on time, having had another rubbish night's sleep due to my annoying cough. Still, there are worse ways to spend a morning than listening to live music and chatting to friends.  Ha, sounds like quite a hipster morning!

I had this plan..

.. to get back to regular blogging. I actually have loads of things I could ramble on about. Can I remember them? Not a chance!

I have a cold - nothing major, sore throat, cough, the usual, but I'm feeling rough.  I've spent a fair amount of today in bed - reading, sleeping, or catching up on I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here on my tablet.  The cuddly boy cat has been my companion for most of the day:

I can't remember where I was going with this. He's lovely though, isn't he?

No longer having a child at primary school means I'm no longer on the PTA, and though I miss aspects of it, I've noticed how much time and energy I must have been putting into it because normally by the 1st of December I'd be stressing out big-time and this year I'm not. Not yet anyway.  I'm still busy but in different ways (ways that don't involve epic battles with a photocopier) - early start tomorrow, for example, as Miss M's in the school concert band and they have a thing on tomorrow morning. And the Boychild has his prelims (mock exams) soon so he gets me to help him revise. This is frequently comical, given that the last time I did chemistry was about 1985...

waking up

Sleepy Sheep

Oh dear, it's been a long time. But now it's a Saturday morning, the Boy and I are awake and pottering around (actually he's waiting for Small Cat to move so that he can get to his computer), and I have some peace and a bit of time at my computer. It has been a busy few months one way or another. Miss M finished primary school and has started high school, so now we're all getting used to the new routine - in some ways easier because at least they're both at the same school. The Boy has his National 5's (exams) this year, but seems quite placid about it. He's likes all his subjects so that helps.

Now that I'm blogging of course I can't think of a single thing to say. It's always the way of it. So I'll tell you about the pictures.

The sheep one is from a day last month when we went for a longish walk at the windfarm nearby (Whitelee). We were walking there one day last year and noticed an oddly-shaped hill just beyond the edge of the windfarm, past the end of one of the tracks leading to a turbine. It was unusually flat-topped so I googled it when I got home and found out that the unusual shape of Dunwan Hill is thought to be the remains of a hill-fort,"occupied probably in later prehistory between around 1200 BC and AD 400" (more details on Historic Environment Scotland's page on it). So when we went again last month we decided to climb it - it's not high, and there's a footpath from the edge of the windfarm land but the previous time we'd gone there had been sheep by the gate and we didn't want to disturb them. This time the sheep were further up and pretty much unbothered by us, and even posed nicely for me. I do like a good sheep picture. They were lounging around just outside the lower rampart, enjoying the sunshine.

Dunwan Hill

Roses on the kitchen windowsill

The roses - every now and then I buy myself flowers and put them in a vase on the kitchen windowsill where they catch the sunlight, if there is any. The kitchen is generally quite a bright room if there's even a hint of sunlight. And then I take a photo for looking at in January, just to remind myself that the sun will be back.

Sleepy cat; dignity optional

And finally Small Cat, this morning, looking very relaxed. Lazy weekend lounging, though to be honest the cats do lazy weekend lounging on any day of the week.

So that's all for know. If I get round to blocking my latest knitting project and adding a pompom, I'll blog about that too!

spawn, spring, other words beginning with sp* (*probably not really)

The frogs have spawned again! My Beloved's response to this was 'That's brave of them - the forecast isn't good' (apparently there is to be more snow, depending on which forecast you look at). I'm not sure if he thinks the frogs consult the weather forecast before embarking on following their reproductive instincts. In any case, frog spawn is pretty robust stuff.

However, delighted as I am to see evidence of new life in our garden, I'm back to the annual worry about tadpole welfare. Our pond is tiny and is currently pretty much filled with frogspawn and not much water, as despite various batches of snow we haven't had much actual rain recently, and I suspect the pond 'liner', a plastic tub, may be leaking. So I find myself hoping for plentiful April showers so that they eventual taddies have somewhere to actually swim, and considering installing another tiny pond. Maybe eventually I'll have a chain of tiny ponds across the garden. Actually this wouldn't take long. I bought a magazine the other day that had a supplement called something like 'tips for small gardens' and on opening it could only conclude that their idea of small gardens and mine do not even feature on the same Venn diagram, let alone overlap.

In knitting news, I finished the green hat I started in January, and also the camera pouch.

And now I'm knitting a shawl (the Age of Brass and Steam Kerchief) from some Malabrigo Rios which I got a while back. I have reached the stage of eternally long rows but I want it to be a proper shawl rather than a kerchief (not that I'm clear what a kerchief is, but it sounds small) so I'm adding at least one extra repeat, so there is some way to go. Good telly knitting though!

Talking of which, in the interest of doing things as a family, even if it's only watching telly together, we are currently working our way through all the episodes of Scrapheap Challenge available on All4. Miss M is mechanically minded and the Boy is keen on science in general, and we'd watched all the Mythbusters and White Rabbit Project episodes available on Netflix so we were really pleased to find Scrapheap as well. Inspired by all this we finally got round to trying the Diet Coke/Mentos thing last week - we completely forgot to take pictures, but they would have been rubbish anyway as we were falling about laughing!

Hairy legs and hairy string

I'll start with hairy string:

It's jute gardening twine actually. I bought a large roll yesterday because I always need string in the garden, and anyway a ball of string is so aesthetically pleasing...

And then, naturally, I wondered what it would be like to knit with. Not that great, if I'm honest, as there's no give to it at all, but I like a challenge. Obviously it's not suitable for, y'know, a garment or anything, but I'm making a coaster kind of thing to put under a plant pot that's on my windowsill. I'm hoping it'll be a bit absorbent if there's any leaking from the pot. After that maybe I'll knit little jute hats for the outside plants. (Or not).

Anyway, hairy legs:

Miss M's school had their Scottish afternoon on Friday (the day after Burns Night). As you can see the younger kids had decorated the school hall rather fabulously.  In January they all learn Scots poetry and songs, and if they feel like it and are good enough three or four from each class are chosen to stand up in front of the whole school and a whole lot of parents at Scottish afternoon and recite a poem (the Boychild avoided this like the plague when he was at primary school). This year Miss M was one of the ones chosen. Her class had a large chunk of Tam o'Shanter to recite. This chunk in fact:

But to our tale:- Ae market-night,
Tam had got planted unco right;
Fast by an ingle, bleezing finely,
Wi' reaming swats, that drank divinely
And at his elbow, Souter Johnny,
His ancient, trusty, drouthy crony;
Tam lo'ed him like a vera brither--
They had been fou for weeks thegither!
The night drave on wi' sangs and clatter
And ay the ale was growing better:
The landlady and Tam grew gracious,
wi' favours secret, sweet and precious
The Souter tauld his queerest stories;
The landlord's laugh was ready chorus:
The storm without might rair and rustle,
Tam did na mind the storm a whistle. 

Care, mad to see a man sae happy,
E'en drown'd himsel' amang the nappy!
As bees flee hame wi' lades o' treasure,
The minutes wing'd their way wi' pleasure:
Kings may be blest, but Tam was glorious.
O'er a' the ills o' life victorious! 

But pleasures are like poppies spread,
You seize the flower, its bloom is shed;
Or like the snow falls in the river,
A moment white--then melts for ever;
Or like the borealis race,
That flit ere you can point their place;
Or like the rainbow's lovely form
Evanishing amid the storm.--
Nae man can tether time or tide;
The hour approaches Tam maun ride;
That hour, o' night's black arch the key-stane,
That dreary hour he mounts his beast in;
And sic a night he taks the road in
As ne'er poor sinner was abroad in. 

The wind blew as 'twad blawn its last;
The rattling showers rose on the blast;
The speedy gleams the darkness swallow'd
Loud, deep, and lang, the thunder bellow'd:
That night, a child might understand,
The Deil had business on his hand. 

(Spell-check isn't really keen on Burns! Translation here)

I don't know how she memorised that lot. But she did and she performed it really well, without going blank or throwing up or anything (I may be projecting slightly). It is a competition, but she knew she had no chance of winning because two of the boys in her class are excellent at this sort of thing and have represented their class in it almost every year (and in fact one of them was over-all winner for the school this year). But she was just so pleased that she did it at all. And I was so proud. I also wondered how she did it as neither her father nor I would ever have done such a thing! 

Bright and woolly

The thing that I am knitting, photographed in a moment of sunlight this afternoon. I have five colours of leftover Drops Nepal and had originally intended to do random stripes in all the colours, but then I thought it might be too much, so with Miss M's help I chose these - warm woodland colours with a splash of pink. I am not a pink person at all but I think this looks okay. And it's squishy. It's been a bit of a hectic week one way or another, so it's nice to have some comfort knitting.

I'm still pondering and plotting what else I can do with my various green wools. And I've just remembered that I have a half-completed (see how glass-half-full I'm being there!) Kirkja shawl tucked away somewhere - as I recall I stalled on it because one of the cats got into the wool and it's a tangled mass, but I quite like untangling wool if I'm in the right mood so that might be a project for the weekend! I have a cold and stuffed up sinuses at the moment so my plan for the weekend is to do pretty much bugger all, now with a little yarn untangling on the side. Perhaps I can find an interesting podcast to listen to while I untangle. It'll be very zen.             
Until the cats discover what I'm up to.

Supposed to be knitting

Today I took a whole load of pictures of the thing I am knitting, and they were all blurry! Guess the light wasn't as bright as it seemed.

So here's a picture from this morning.

Anyway, the thing I am knitting is a pouch for my compact camera. I do have a case for it but it's quite bulky with space for spare memory cards and stuff, and all I really need for day-to-day use is something to protect it from bumps, pointy things and leaking ballpoints in my handbag. And I wanted a small piece of fairly mindless knitting. So I'm using leftover bits of Drops Nepal in various colours - stripes, bit of Fair Isle, whatever I feel like really. It's looking quite nice so far, I think! But you'll have to take my word for it until I can take a decent picture.

Walking in a Winter Wonderland

Well, the snow did fall. And kept falling - showers, but heavy ones, so that when it was snowing it felt as if we were in the middle of a blizzard that had been raging for hours and would continue to rage for hours. And then it would just stop and there'd be a patch of blue sky for a bit before the next shower rolled in. It's been fun to watch.

I like this one, there's a Brueghelesque Hunters In The Snow kind of colour scheme about it. It's even more marked on the similar picture I put on Instagram - that was taken with my phone and came out a bit darker.

Still snowing and I'm wondering what tomorrow will be like. It's been dark for hours but with reflected light on snow and clouds it's undark too. Sort of peachy!

Green Monday - a lunchtime post

Ah, that's a bit better! I just took advantage of a moment of bright(er)ness to get a picture of some of my green yarn. So much verdant possibility, though I've no idea yet what I'm going to knit. I'm in a hat mood at the moment but realistically there's only so many hats I can wear, although saying that a Dr Seuss-type image popped into my head. Perhaps I should wear them all. At once.

Also taking advantage of the moment of sunshine I took a picture of the tulips on my windowsill, not realising until I uploaded it to the computer and resized it that it shows exactly how manky the kitchen window is!

So I've just cleaned it. But now the sun has gone! Well, take my word for it, it's loads better. In my defence the window is behind the sink and is an awkward stretch to clean so I tend not to do it very often, or until low winter sunlight shows it up horribly!
 
We're expecting snow later. Netweather is enthusiastically promising us 'torrential' snow from midnight. The Met Office slightly more cautiously warns of 'frequent and heavy hail and snow showers'. We tend to take somewhere in between the two as the Met Office weather station covering this area is lower down than we are, and in any case this town has its own meteorological quirks.  So really any sunshine at all before the cloud rolls in is to be enjoyed.

What I should be doing just now is putting a load of laundry on, and planting the last of my bulbs. But I'm going to spend five minutes finishing my coffee and peacefully browsing knitting patterns - sounds nice, doesn't it?

January! The perfect time to go to a museum!

The perfect day for a museum visit being, of course, when it's cold, grey and wet, and spending a few hours indoors looking at interesting things seems like the best bet.  The museum in question is the Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery in Glasgow's West End. The West End is north of the Clyde and we live south of Glasgow, so we used the satnav, hoping it would help us on the bits of the route we were a little vague about. It turns out that the satnav has a fear of rivers, refused to cross the Clyde, and had us driving in circles in the Southside for some time, at which point we gave up on it. Eventually we arrived at Kelvingrove, and headed inside for a happy wander. I really like the photo above - there was something about the floor tiles and the contrast with the rather striking colours of the painting at the end. Close to I wasn't so keen on the painting ('The Last of the Crew' by Briton Riviere) - it wasn't terrible, just not my cup of tea - but it works very well in that spot.

This is the view across the East Court (I think - the museum is big and old and symmetrical in layout which you'd think would make it not confusing - not so). The pink blobs are the 'floating heads', an installation by Sophie Cave. The heads show various expressions and emotions, and the light underneath them changes colour now and then. I don't know what they're made of (and googling hasn't helped) but I'm guessing they must be plastic as their strings aren't very thick!

They're sort of creepy and fascinating at the same time, but there's so much to see that you stop noticing them pretty quickly to be honest. Or maybe that's just because I've seen them before.

The museum is full of interesting things. Miss M and I managed to lose the rest of the family when we got distracted by textiles and the like. I was particularly taken with the pleasing pattern of weaving on the basket from Papua New Guinea above. I love woven things. I'm glad that picture came out reasonably well because a lot of them didn't - too many reflections!

And the building from outside, looking warmer than it should because of the lights on the facade!

January! Not usually green but will be if I have anything to do with it!

I nearly finished my hat this evening - just the pompom to go. It occurred to me while I've been knitting it that I really like green, and then it occurred to me that I have other green wool languishing in my stash. So I'm going to knit green this January. As you see from the picture there are various yarns of various thicknesses (and actually I can see there's more green in another box on top of the bookcase) so goodness knows what I'll end up knitting.

Apologies for the drabness of the photo incidentally - it's hours past dark and everything looked washed out with the lighting in here so I used the flash which isn't much better. Somewhere in the house is my mobile on which is the photo that actually prodded me into seeking out the green stash this evening, that being a photo of mossy grass. I think I instagrammed it, but I'm too dozey to figure out how to get a picture from Instagram onto here, but this might be a link to it.

Edit: lol, that picture's even worse than I thought, nothing looks green. I'll redo that in daylight tomorrow!

January! In which the sun shines a bit sometimes!

Okay, I might have to give up the 'January' titles - I'm running out of ideas and I can't go back to 'Part x' because I've missed days, and x does not equal the date, and I'll just get myself confused. I've also decided to change the 'things to make January bearable' tag to 'enjoying January' 'cos I'm such a sunny positive person

But never mind that. Today it was not freezing (though there was stealth windscreen frost that looked like condensation but required vigorous scraping) and the sun came out for a bit! I even had washing on the line for a little while (evidence is on Instagram) and although the vast majority of the drying was achieved in the tumble dryer, the laundry did smell fresher I think.

And I bought a foil insulating windscreen cover thing this morning so there shouldn't be so much scraping from now on. The forecast for tonight is for positive temperatures though so I'm slightly disgruntled that I don't get to test it immediately.

Argh, late, need to sleep!

January! Still going!

Completely addled but still going. Yes, we needed to get back into a routine - but on the whole scraping ice off the car in the dark is a routine that could be tweaked a little. Short post tonight because I'm badly in need of sleep after last night's thoroughly entertaining but ultimately exhausting dreams.

But daffodils!

January - part seven. Seven!

Taking the decorations down. Yes, I know it should have been yesterday (or even the day before according to who you listen to), but I can guarantee that if some piece of bad luck befalls me this year I won't be clutching my forehead and wailing 'Oh no, why did I leave those decorations up a day (or possibly two) too long!'

Everything looks a bit more spacious now. I love it when the tree is up but it takes up space and blocks access to a bookcase so a few weeks is enough really. And actually I love packing the baubles away, wrapping them up in kitchen paper and taping up the boxes to keep them safe until next year. The kids are back at school tomorrow and it's time to get settled into a routine again. Part of me thinks 'bleurgh' at the thought of it but the slightly more sensible part of me recognises that we need it!

January - part 6. Fresh air!

That's one thing about January, there's always fresh air, whether it's whizzing past you at gale force, or it's nipping at your nose. It was the latter this afternoon, when Miss M and I went out for a walk. I'd just been out in the garden wrapping plastic blankets around the more fragile plants (and one particularly fragile flower pot that doesn't care for frosts) as the forecast is for it to be pretty chilly tonight, and thought I'd drag Miss M out for a bit. We walked to the edge of town, admired the sunset, patted a favourite tree, took a 'matching bobble-hat' selfie, and generally had a lovely time. But we were both quite cold by the time we got home, so it was good to get in and defrost!

January - part 5. A tottering pile of books!

I'll just say that again - a tottering pile of books! Actually it's not really tottering, but is a satisfyingly substantial pile of books, most of which were Christmas presents. The Robert Macfarlane one was one I got for £1.50 in the sale at a discount bookshop, and the Susan Cooper one at the top is one I often re-read at this time of year as it's set at Christmas. I read Marsali Taylor's Death on a Longship on Christmas Day and Boxing Day, and loved it - Shetland setting and boats and a mystery, pretty much ideal for me.

I started this post hours ago with the intention of writing a more substantial post than yesterday's, but got interrupted. It's been a very long day so I'm off to bed now. So much for a post of substance!

January - part four. Light!

Miss M and I went out for a bit today - first to the post office (mum and dad, your calendar is on its way) and then for a mooch around the shops as Miss M had a book token to spend. I was idly looking out for Christmas tree lights for next year as ours are old-style non-LED lights which are one-by-one ceasing to function. More or less by chance we spotted a set of half-price multi-coloured lights. And also the 'crackled sphere' with lights in the picture, also half-price.  I wouldn't even have glanced at it full price to be honest, but actually it's lovely, especially the way it lights up the wall behind. Thinking about it, this festive season has been all about light - candles in various sizes, fairy lights all over the place, and my light-up wreath hanging from a hook above the mirror on the landing:

I don't mind the thought of taking most of the decorations down in the next couple of days but I'll miss the lights. There will still be candles of course! 

January - part three. Oh yeah, calendars!

Three days into the year and I finally get around to putting my calendars up. I'm particularly pleased with my Ravilious one!

January - part two. Knitting!

I did cast on my hat on Hogmanay - well, started. I cast on 20 stitches at twenty to midnight, and then Cat1 started throwing up - on the windowsill. He wolfed his dry food too fast again, that part is obvious. Why he choose the windowsill as a suitable venue is less obvious. Oh well. In any case I spent the remaining minutes of 2017 cleaning up cat-sick. Oh, and posting on Facebook about it of course, because when you lead a life as glamorous as mine you like to spread the sparkle a bit. Or alternatively I know my friends will be mildly amused by it.

But yesterday I finished casting on and did the rib, and today I got onto the cable bit. Actually I'm well past the cable bit now, as the picture is from several hours ago when there was daylight. I love it. The yarn is so squishy (wool for texture, alpaca for softness) and the colour so rich and the pattern is fun and.. it's all good!

The pattern is Jesse's Christmas hat (by Elspeth Kursh) again, the one I made for my mother-in-law.

In other news, this morning we finally watched yesterday's Great Festive Bake Off and I laughed myself silly at their East 17 pastiche. Apparently it was also used as the trailer but as I watch very little actual television I hadn't seen it, so it was completely out of the blue. The kids of course didn't get it, 'Stay Another Day' being well before their time, but I laughed!

January - part one. Look up!

I was going to call this post 'Surviving January - part one' but then I thought it sounded too negative. Who knows, it could be a great month! But to stave off any potential Januaryness I'm trying to focus on the positive things. So today it's all about beautiful skies, such as the one this afternoon. It was taken across the supermarket carpark, which is not in itself the loveliest place, but has the advantage of being an open space, a little elevated, on the edge of town, so there's often a feeling of big skies and wide open spaces there (maybe not the steppes or the open sea, but not bad for an inland town).  And it was lovely.

In fact even the supermarket was a pleasant experience, as it was quiet and everybody was relaxed and happy, unrushed. Supermarkets are not usually open here on New Year's Day (or at least not as far as I've been aware on previous years) but I knew this one would be this year from a conversation with one of the trolley guys last week. And it was just as well because we were running short of spread, milk and cat litter, though the main reason I went out was just to get out really, just for a little while by myself. Bliss.