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! 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!

A taster

Foula from Eshaness

I've been trying to do a blog post since the end of July. And now it's mid-September. And actually I'm very tired just now so this isn't even a proper post, but I'm working on the assumption that if I write a short post tonight I'm more likely to write a longer one tomorrow. Well, it's worth a try.

The picture above is from our trip back to Shetland in July. There's at least a full-sized post to be had from that, plus about a gazillion photos, so the picture is a deal I make with myself to write more another day. Anyway, the picture is of Foula, off the west coast of Shetland, and is taken from Eshaness which is on the north-west coast of Shetland. It was a beautiful day that day, all sun and sparkle, and I love that this photo is all shades of blue, yet it looks warm.

heather

And from the same day, heather and grass and blue sky as we climbed a steep hill that I climbed a lot as a kid.

It's not really very high, but it was the highest hill in our immediate area and has wonderful views (well, I think so anyway):

Ruins and Being Organised

The ruins pictures are just because I want there to be a nice picture at the top of the post in case I don't get post for weeks (again). And also because the pictures were taken last Sunday on a particularly nice day, so why not? The ruins in question are Bothwell Castle, some bits 13th century, some 14th, so it's doing all right really!

The kids have been back at school for two weeks now. The Boy Child is settling into high school - it's a big change from primary school but he seems to be adjusting quite quickly, and Miss M is adjusting to not having him at the same school as her. Not that they saw much of each other, but she knew he was there! So new routines all round. I'm due to start my next (and last) Open University course at the start of October so I'm looking at ways to be more organised. For the moment I'm trying to get all the course reading done before the course starts - some things are easier than others. I'm 40% through Gulliver's Travels at the moment and it's slow going, whereas As You Like It only took a couple of days.

I'm a great one for list-making. I am a pen and paper person when it comes to getting organised, although I use my phone and tablet for appointment reminders and so on. A while back I came across a mention of bullet journalling, which is a bit like making to do lists but with different symbols for different things. It can get very complicated and I'm wary of that - it could be a big timesuck, which is hardly the point - but I've taken elements of it so that I can keep track of things done, things started, things no longer necessary, and things moved to another day.

I did a search for bullet journalling on the wonderful world of Pinterest and discovered all sorts of amazing complicated systems involving multiple colours of felt-tip pens, loads of symbols and quite unfeasibly neat handwriting! Hmm. So the picture above is the reality of my own version, complete with post-it notes for other things to keep track of (shopping list, theme list for a picture-a-day group I'm a member of, that kind of thing). It's simple and not very pretty, but is working for me, especially on days when I have lots of not-very-big things I want to get done but might easily forget because they're essentially boring, or when there are things I need to get the kids to. I always start with 'Kids to school' so that I can tick something off at the start of the day!

So there we are, the start of a new academic year and all the resolutions that entails!

knitting in the dark

I have come to the conclusion that I am not naturally suited to knitting dark purple things. In the evenings. In winter. While watching telly.

The headband/earwarmer thing proceeds. I won't say 'proceeds apace' because it's been a case of two steps forward, one step back (and occasionally vice versa). It really is a very straightforward pattern but because it's so dark I'm just not spotting mistakes until, ooh, ages later. Thank goodness for those lifelines eh? It's getting there now though, and I'm not seeing any obvious mistakes in that picture.

Despite my talk of dark wintry evenings it's actually clear and sunny today. Cat2 has been sprawling on a chair near the window to make the most of it. Yes, same chair, she hopped up as soon as I moved the knitting and immediately managed to look as if she'd been lying their for several hours. It's a cat talent. The one that allows them to do the 'who me?' face when you came back to a seat you vacated approximately 30 seconds ago to find that it is Taken.

Making the most of the sunshine I went out into the garden to see what's going on on. Not much, though the borage is still flowering:

As is the nigella:

The dyer's chamomile still has a few bedraggled flowers showing:

but it hasn't done as well this year. I seem to recall reading that it's sort of perennial but after two or three years it's not nearly as enthusiastic and runs out of steam, so I'll plant seeds again in the spring. Also I'll pull up the mint I inadvertently planted in that flower bed and is making a bid for flower bed domination. Actually the sunshine in the garden was at about head height and ground level was mostly in shadow due to the houses behind us, so  these pictures make it look gloomier than it is.

The poppies did okay:

The nice thing about them is that they look interesting at pretty much any stage.

This picture however pretty much summarises the garden in November:

Isolated patches of colour, but mostly greeny-brown. I did find some brilliant mushrooms/toadstools, but they didn't photograph well. Actually they looked like pancakes (drop scones, not crepes).

I can't quite believe it's November already.  Ant and Dec, minor celebs and creepy-crawlies are once more on the television so that's my trashy telly sorted for the next few weeks.

Children In Need came and went, and the school did their talent show in aid of it as usual. Miss M was up on stage on her own this time, in front of the whole school plus a lot of parents, doing a dance/gymnastics routine she made up herself*. I was so proud of her - she's much braver (and, needless to say more talented) than me. In fact all the kids were brave and enthusiastic and great. But I'll be glad not to hear Let It Go again. Ever.

I have decided not to make a Christmas cake this year, which is just as well because I should have done it by now really.  Even using a smaller tin and scaling down last year we still had loads left over so it's not worth it. I'll make mince pies instead.  Maybe. And I have done no Christmas shopping yet. I'm in denial at the moment. I'll just finish that cable headband thing first..


* To Crazy by Ms Britney Spears. Miss M is rather a fan of early Britney. Well, who isn't?