The widening gyre

A bit of Yeats for you there, because I'm still spinning and because Chinua Achebe, author of Things Fall Apart, died this week, which made me think of the poem.

So, yes, still spinning. The doctor says it's labyrinthitis which is what I suspected.  It comes and goes. And is particularly bad in supermarket checkout queues! I think that's because that's the only time I'm actually standing still. The rest of the time I'm either moving or sitting down, and it's manageable then. In fact it's not really bad, I'm functioning, getting the kids to and from school, doing most of the usual things, though Powerhooping is out for the moment - the sight of all those hoops is just too much!  I've been using the computer less and for shorter periods of time which is why I haven't been blogging - I'm a s-l-o-w blogger,  it takes me a while to find the right pictures and write a post!

So what have I been up to? Well I did do another loaf of bread, following an actual recipe this time and it turned out ok:

 Then My Beloved made some of his wonderful oaty rolls using his usual method of haphazard measuring and, as far as I can tell, minimal kneading, and they were amazing!  Hmph.

 I've made choc-choc-chip cookies with Miss Mouse:

And apple and blackcurrant crumble just for me, 'cos nobody else likes it (but no picture of that because the ones I took looked too visceral).  Comfort food? Oh yes! It's been grimly cold with a really biting wind. I've just been watching the snow falling again. It's been snowing a bit every day for days - mostly tiny pebbles of snow, not hail because it's too light and soft for that, but not flakes either, more like very small polystyrene beads. Today it was back to real flakes though briefly. I'm not looking forward to going out to get the kids. This time last year it was like this, which was nice but weird.

Today I mordanted a skein of wool - that's the first mordant this year, we're getting to dyeing season, yay! I might even invest in a bigger pot so I can do more than one skein at a time.

And that's all for now. It's taken me two hours to write this post because it all got too spinny and I had to go and lie down in the middle, so if it's incoherent don't blame me, blame my inner ear!

Randomness

It's been an unfocussed and somewhat random week. I haven't really felt able to blog about anything in particular. So I'm following the example of a friend from a forum who occasionally does a Random Thoughts post about the weird things that have been crossing her mind.

- Here's a slightly odd (and not very good, though if you click on it you should get a closer look) photograph from the other day.



We were in bright sunshine while not very far further down was thick fog. It looked for all the world like an inland sea with islands sticking up here and there. In fact the islands are hills and mountains to the north-west, and between us and them is Glasgow. It was a bit like that bit in Ponyo when the sea rises.

- Yellow tulips bringing sunshine to the kitchen:

I like photographing flowers on the windowsill but it does make me notice how many splashes there on the window. Oh dear. I do clean it now and then but it's quite awkward reaching across the sink and it never remains splash-free for long.

- Tomorrow I'm going on a school trip with the Boy's class again - should be interesting! It's to do with their Ancient Egypt topic. I've never been particularly interested in the ancient Egyptians for some reason so don't know a huge amount about them, so I expect I'll learn something too.

- You know, I'm too tired even to remember what my random thoughts have been. What a non-post! But never mind - I find with blogging that the longer it is between posts, the harder it is to write anything, so better to babble inanely (from my point of view) than write nothing at all. For the reader of course it might be an entirely different matter!