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! 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!

We're getting there

 Things keeping me going in January are:

A little bit of snow last week. I even have snowballing pictures but the kids wouldn't like it if I made them public. But it was great seeing them have fun in the snow!

The first daffodils in the shops

My new diary insert (by Morgan Le Fae's Trinkets - I love these; this particular layout suits me perfectly).  This took a random route from the Netherlands and I thought it had got irretrievably lost. Monique had posted it well before Christmas so goodness knows where it went on its travels!

Winding more wool.

And today I watched Rams (Hrútar) which I'd been meaning to watch for ages, and loved it. I even knitted while I watched, though it was only a sample to check how the variegated wool knitted up. I was meaning to make a hat with it but all my circular needles seem to have vanished. I must have put them somewhere particularly safe...

We're all more or less recovered from our various lurgies now, and although the first couple of weeks were pretty awful even by January standards, I think settling back into the normal routine has helped.

colour

Some flowers I saw today when I went for a quick walk after a slightly tedious trip to the retail park - ridiculous to sublime in one fell swoop!

Well, that was a long day!

Starting with being rudely awoken by two alarm clocks half an hour apart, only one of which was mine. I'm just not a morning person. But the sun shone (somewhat surprisingly - the forecast was for 100% cloud cover), and I even got out into garden briefly in the afternoon to take a few pictures, so not all bad!

*phew*

Computer is fixed - well, for now at least. Hurray for My Beloved and his tech skillz! I finally got to look at my holiday photos and thought I'd mention the day we went to Kellie Castle, which is an NTS property fairly near Pittenweem, should anybody be in the vicinity. The kids were fairly unimpressed with it as a castle and to be fair it's really more of a tower house with bits added - to them a castle is something like Stirling Castle or Bothwell castle, spoilt brats that they are! I'd been there once before, years ago when I was a student and my parents were visiting and took me out for the day. It was the middle of winter and only the garden was open, but even at that time of year the garden was enjoyable to visit. To see it in August was pretty amazing. It's just my kind of garden - masses of plants, new things to see around every corner, and a formal structure with enthusiastically informal plants.

We wandered around for ages and to be honest I could have stayed for a lot longer, but the kids' patience in gardens is limited. So far.

*sigh* Not much to say, I'm just enjoying looking at the flowers again! I should have taken my good camera with me but I was already laden with other stuff (sun hats, sunglasses, umbrella...) so just had my little compact camera in my pocket. It's an excellent little camera but has acquired a mark on the lens that I can't remove and I assume is a scratch, so some of the pictures appear a bit smudgy in the middle.

After we'd mooched round the garden for a while we went and found the adventure playground, small but excellent, and the kids were able to burn off some energy. Then we headed in to look at the house itself. Miss M, thankfully, decided to do one of the picture quizzes which was great because it really slowed her down and let us have a proper look. It's an interesting house and worth taking slowly.

And that's it really! A nice day out, especially as it was sunny and the garden was looking beautiful.

Springy

It was a beautiful day today, sunny and relaxed. Sometimes I feel as if I've been cold for months but today was bliss. We're not talking tropical, just nicely warm for once!  My Beloved was off doing the Yorkhill Easter Egg Run, a motorbike event which raises money for Yorkhill hospital, and the kids and I went to the Museum of Rural Life with my mother-in-law and my brother. We saw my Favourite Tree:

And lots of lambs, these two only about an hour old:

You don't get much more springy than that!

Before we went out I'd done an Easter Egg hunt for the kids again. As usual the clues were in rhyme. Very bad rhyme. I'm rather regretting doing that the first time because if I don't do it now I'll feel I'm not trying hard enough. The kids did say it didn't have to rhyme though. It's just me putting pressure on myself - ridiculous! :-D

They were good bad rhymes though!


Also the sock progresses:

Actually since then I've turned the heel - it's really fun knitting, this. So quick - hurray for small feet! I think this may be my quickest ever sock actually. There's nothing like an instant gratification project..

It's been a lovely weekend. Although I've still been getting some studying in, the pace has been much more leisurely for the last couple of days. I do like a bit of leisure.

Mists and mellow (also more creepy-crawlies)

One day last week we woke to mist and an awful lot of very visible spiders' webs. The kids were delighted! As was I actually - it all looked absolutely magical. There's something very calming about walking in fog. We've done a lot of walking recently because there's some fairly epic digging-up-of-the-roads-to-lay-cables going on in our area with four-way temporary traffic lights and other such joys, so going on foot is working out as less stressful. Fortunately my occasionally charming offspring are proving quite accepting of this.

Other mornings have been damp but mild. This year the local council* planted long thin patches of wildflower seeds (possibly an oxymoron there, but I'm sure you know what I mean) here and there and the result was long strips of flowers by the roads, looking absolutely gorgeous.

There weren't many patches that I saw, but maybe there'll be more next year (and with self-seeding perhaps this year's patches will be bigger next year) and it's a good start.

Sorry about the wonkiness of the picture but I was distracted by unexpectedly wet feet - it had rained in the night, and I was wearing trainers. I always forget that the ventilation mesh bit on top of my trainers lets water in. You'd think I'd learn, but there you go.

Meanwhile (actually on a completely different day, so not 'meanwhile' at all) my sunflowers continue to attract the bees - buff tail bumblebee also approves, so I think we can label the sunflowers a success.

They also attracted this... thing: 

I don't know what it is, and it's not exactly a vision of loveliness, but it's oddly fascinating to look at. Anyone got any idea?  Update: I put the pic on Facebook and my very knowledgeable friend Wendy found out that it's a yellow dung fly (scathophaga stercoraria).  I've probably seen them loads of times before but never up close like that.



* Presumably - I remember reading of a plan to grow some pollinator-friendly plants at the roadsides, so this would seem to be it.

A flower

Dyer's chamomile

Longest Day

It's been a warm and sunny week.  Little Cat has also been lounging around in the garden, and for the odd moment or two, so have I. It's nice to have the deckchair out. We checked out various weather forecasts and to our amusement rain is due from Wednesday lunchtime onwards. And when does the school term end? Wednesday lunchtime of course! Well, we'll wait and see.

I love the marigolds in the garden - most of this year's are yellow but there's also this orange one too, looking as fresh and luscious as an orange ice-lolly (of which we have several in the freezer).

I inflated the paddling pool the other day but the slight slow puncture from last summer had become two punctures and it deflated fairly rapidly. So when I was doing the grocery shopping I got a new paddling pool too. That's warm weather shopping for you - bread, milk, ice-lollies, paddling-pool.. The Boy, though a good swimmer, is not fussed about messing around in water  - too old at 11? (I'm not, at 43..)  Or too much like a cat, like his father? But Miss M adores splashing around in water and was delighted with the new paddling-pool. To be honest I'd have got it anyway!

Today was a slightly cooler day and although there was plenty of outdoor time, we spent some time playing Munchkin Zombies. Oh, and eating leftover pizza from yesterday.  My Beloved had bought the game on a whim last week, but we weren't sure if the kids would enjoy it. Miss M, at seven, proved herself capable of playing it and fine with the adding up involved, but there were tears at the end when her brother won (not because he'd won so much as because she had plans for her next turn and didn't get to play it out), so although there is quite a lot to take in and remember when you first play it, I'd say the 'suitable for age 10 and up' is really more to do with emotional maturity than anything else. The Boy suddenly got the hang of it halfway through and turned into a mini version of his gamer daddy, and trashed us at the end. I'm not very good at games like this and was fairly muddled, though amused by it.

We're gradually finding games we all enjoy - Forbidden Island, Forbidden Desert, Get Bit.. Mostly we've found about these by watching Tabletop. I'm not into board games in the traditional sense, but some of these untraditional ones are great, especially Forbidden Island and Forbidden Desert which are co-operative. The Tabletop episode for Forbidden Island had me laughing because John Scalzi's rationalisation for why it was a good thing they lost was the same as mine the first time we lost at it.

I think I'll go to bed now. This morning I was woken at 4am by two men walking down the road having a fight, absolutely screaming at each other. It was a bit unnerving. That was technically just before sunrise, though in fact it was pretty light by then, so it really has been the longest day.

summer term frenzy

Every year it takes me by surprise - the Easter holiday drifts by and then we're into the summer term frenzy and so much happens that I'd like to blog about, but there never seems to be any time. The days get longer, yet somehow shorter, and my to-do list gets ever more unmanageable, and the weeks fly by far too quickly.

At the end of May there was a long weekend and we headed to the Highlands to see Mum and Dad. While we were there we saw an oystercatcher nesting in an overflow carpark at the Highland Wildlife Park. She was very defensive of her nest and the staff had put out traffic cones to protect her well-camouflaged eggs.

And back at Mum and Dad's, the duck who has adopted them and flies in most days for a snack.

As we edged into June we had the school's fun day, for which I did what felt like an epic amount of baking (somehow when you do what feels like an epic amount of baking it only ever amounts to enough to fill a few plastic tubs) and manned the coconut shy. There was a bit of lemon drizzle traybake left. I'd never made it before but it's a very forgiving recipe and turned out perfectly. I'm not really that much of a cake person, but this was quite good.

School sports day got cancelled at the last minute due to torrential rain and the teachers, PTA (including me) and teenage helpers from the high school, cobbled together an indoor alternative which left us all knackered.

And I caught a cold, which always seems so unfair in summer. Accordingly I treated myself to a copy of Pompom Quarterly  - I ordered last winter's issue, because there's a hat pattern in it I really like and I don't really do summer knitting. Out of season it may be, but it's lovely.

Then the sun came out again and I found this gorgeous bee in my garden:

I think it's a red-tailed bumblebee and is apparently quite common but I've never seen one before.

The sky was so blue I went round the garden taking pictures of the underside of the flowers and plants. My favourite is this poppy - the contrast with the sky is so strong.

The garden's looking quite happy actually. Quite exuberant in fact. And nicely quiet. The school year finishes a week on Wednesday and the frenzy continues until then, so I'm hoping for a few quiet (and dry) spells when I can sit in my deckchair and appreciate it all.

Romantical

I spent much of today sneezing. I was tidying Miss M's bedroom which is very small and somewhat cramped, and this necessitated wriggling under her bed to fight off hordes of vicious dust-bunnies. I am allergic to dust. However, the might of Henry prevailed and Miss M's room is somewhat tidier and very much cleaner than it was before (not that it was dirty really, but there were very dusty areas and as she's been somewhat hayfeverish recently I think she may have inherited my tendency to allergies).  My Beloved spent much of the day tinkering with his motorbike (sorry, fettling) and went out for a ride to check, I dunno, something technical. He shopped while he was out and came back with flowers for me.

Awwwwwww :-).

Unfortunately he stuffed them in his panniers, so I got five roses and five decapitated roses:

Never mind.

I am Oz, the Bright and Colourful

I seem to have acquired a small and very bright, floral fabric stash - soon to be skirts for Miss M.  And maybe a cushion cover. And I've even got matching threads. Dear me, that seems suspiciously like being organised.

Out in the garden, into which the sun shone again today, things are also bright and floral. These tulips are a bit garish really (red and white stripey) but they do brighten things up.

We're all settling back into routine again after the kids' school holiday (two blissful weeks of not rushing in the morning!) but it doesn't take long to get back to normal. This term has several interruptions - public holidays, in-service days, sports day and so on - so it tends to fly by. The kids are having their school photos taken tomorrow so my little scruffbags are having to wear actual shirts and ties rather than their usual casual polo shirts. They are not happy about this and to be fair, last year's pictures were a bit pants so I'm not sure why I'm bothering. Mindless optimism probably. Maybe this is the year they'll look like themselves and not like newly-promoted Chief Inspectors or Conservative party candidates.  They only get class photos in Primary One and Primary Seven so they're just individual or sibling photos this year. Maybe I should get them to pull silly faces. They'd look more like themselves if they did. Oh, the temptation!

It could be bunnies

Alas the 99p-bunch-of-daffodils season appears to have come to an end. I have moved onto freesias which I also love and have the advantage of looking great for absolutely ages until you suddenly realise that they've actually completely dried out. The disadvantage is that they're more expensive so I can't get flowers for the kitchen and flowers for the living-room as I do in daffodil season. 

Oh well. I'll console myself with my little bunny tin and tiny chocolate eggs.

We are almost painfully disorganised when it comes to holidays. You know all those people who book their summer holidays ten months in advance? Yeah. Not us. However we have actually got ourselves organised enough for My Beloved to book time off work, for me to book the cattery, and we've even managed to book somewhere to stay.  It's a good job I don't work at the moment though - the thought of co-ordinating his leave, my leave, the cattery and accommodation doesn't bear thinking about. And we're only planning a week in Fife. If we had to factor in stuff like passports, flights or ferries I expect I would crack up. But we are sorted, we are organised, and we are going to have a summer holiday this year. This is good.

Sprung

No, I haven't been sprung from the joint. Nor have I sprung a leak. Nope, what has happened, and it's really most unlikely, is that spring has sprung. We have had two consecutive days of sunshine, blue skies and relative warmth. Two! It's not been raining! Yesterday the kids came running out of school into the balmy 10.5 degree sunshine shedding jackets, cardigans, hoodies like, well, Glaswegians in the spring. And there are yellow things in the garden.

I'm still not feeling 'one hundred per cent' as athletes being interviewed by the BBC always say (shortly after the default athlete sentence opener 'well, I mean..' pronounced 'wellamean'), but a little bit of sunshine certainly helps. And watching Cat1 blissfully expose his belly to the sunlight is both amusing and relaxing. Talking of whom...

Monday afternoon was chaotic.  We were running around getting ready to take Miss M to her dance class, when the doorbell rang and it was a creepily smiling man who wanted to give me a leaflet, not as I initially thought about 'the Good News', but about a service he offered cleaning leather suites. ''Er, no, sorry, we're just going out, bit of a rush.." I muttered shutting the door in his face while simultaneously thinking "I use baby wipes to clean the leather settee, doesn't everyone?"  Maybe specialist leather suite cleaning is a euphemism for something. 

Then we continued to run around like headless chickens, because I couldn't find my keys. That deserves the bold type, it's the kind of thing I get anxiety dreams about. I looked everywhere, even most unlikely places (bathroom), and had the kids searching too, which is usually pointless but worth a try. By this time we're really actually running late and I hate being late. Then as I was looking upstairs for the second time, the kids shouted up "We've found them!"
"Where?" I shrieked, running down the stairs.
"Under the cat."

I'd thrown my keys on the footstool as we'd come in from school and the cat had gone and sat on them. And continued to sit on them while I ran around looking for them. *sigh* Until he got bored and sauntered off.

At times like this I need mindless knitting. Or actually the crochet is good at the moment because it's getting easier and less wonky and therefore more enjoyable, but I still have to concentrate a bit so it takes my mind off whatever my subconscious feels I should be fretting about. But back to knitting and a recent piece of mindless knitting, a facecloth:

I hardly ever knit with cotton as I don't find it the pleasantest thing to knit with, but actually a garter stitch square is fine because you don't need a lot of give in it. What I'd forgotten was what a pain it is finishing off because any ends you weave in promptly unweave themselves and knots tend not to stay knotted*.  So I googled for an answer and found this Youtube video which has an answer that is both clever and so blindingly obvious that I really did want to kick myself. And I hope that if I include the link here I'm more likely to remember it next time.

I can't see a need for a vast number of facecloths but it was a quick enjoyable knit and I learned something useful from it. And at the time I was avoiding a half-turned heel that was not quite right (fixed now - just needed daylight and concentration). It's always handy to have a procrastination knit in the background!

* I'll confess here that although it is considered a cardinal sin on Ravelry to tie in a new piece of yarn, of whatever type, I've done so for years and don't think it matters much if the 'wrong' side is hidden. For example, inside a garment where it's not seen, as long as it's not a huge knot that'll rub, why worry?