Reasons To Be Cheerful

Blimey, that was a longish blog break wasn't it? I'd got quite good about blogging reasonably regularly too! But we had a long weekend up north visiting my parents, and since the kids went back to school after that I feel as if we've barely had a chance to draw breath. Phew..

So, Reasons To Be Cheerful - well 1) naturally is having a wonderful few days with Mum and Dad. Even better, my brother visited them for a few days just before us, so we overlapped by a few hours - it was the first time we'd all been there at the same time for several years.

The weather was pretty mild for the Cairngorms in February so we got some outdoors time.

Miss Mouse with Granny and Grandpa

Even some blue skies:

At Ruthven Barracks

It was surprisingly lush in places, such as on the roof of the playhouse in the playground at Revack Estate:

And the top of this fence-post just makes me think of tepuis - those amazing lush South American plateaus (plateaux?). It's a proper miniature Lost World:


2) Reason 2 is not unconnected to photography. Actually Reason Two is My Beloved, my tech guru, who has got new stuff for my 'puter (hard disk and I dunno what else), installed Linux for me, and and and has bought me a new compact camera to replace the one that I lost/was nicked. *happy sigh* The new camera is the newer version of my old one and is very nice indeed.

3) Reason Three is Pleasant Surprises in the garden:

I was mooching around in the garden on Friday, trying to get to get the cats back inside probably, and spotted a patch of blue in a pot. I thought it was a gale-shredded bit of the cover from the trampoline poles, but no, it was a flower. It's an iris, isn't it? My garden's a bit boring at this time of year - just some tiny snowdrops (pretty but easy to miss) and a few white crocuses - so this was such a Pleasant Surprise. Can't wait for the daffodils, but this'll tide me over for now.


So that's the last official Planet Penny Reasons To Be Cheerful. However as it's a while 'til the end of winter in these parts and there are likely many dreich days to come, I think I'll continue doing the odd Reasons To Be Cheerful post, just to keep myself going. Many thanks to Penny for thinking this meme up, it's been fun!

A mostly picture post

Or 'Reasons To Be Cheerful in photographic form'!

Picture 1 - Why a Mostly Picture Post? Because going on a school trip* with a bunch of lively eight-year-olds takes it out of a girl! Can't stop yawning now! Hats off to their teacher, I don't know she does it day in, day out. It was a lovely day though - interesting and entertaining. Look what I found:

My favourite things - spindle whorls, needles and the like. I love seeing ancient things like these when you know what they were for and how they were used and it puts the rather distant concept of 'the ancient Egyptians' into some kind of context - it's not all pyramids and shabtis and hieroglyphics, it's also people making cloth. That's something I can relate to.

Picture 2 - here's Miss Mouse after the school Valentine's disco. She also came home with a chocolate heart (for being best dancer in Primary One) and three red fake roses. So a good night out! I sat in the room set aside for parents and got to know some of the other mums better which is always good.


Picture 3 - my current knitting (when I don't feel like doing my razorshell scarf). They're another pair of socks for the boy, 'negatives' of the last pair which he likes so much. The bright colours are Very Good For Me.

With my knitting is Miss Mouse's bookmark that she made at the local library's special storytime/craft session on National Libraries Day - the kids coloured in two bits of bookmark (front and back), stuck them together, then the librarian laminated it for them. I love that library!

*To Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum.

More reasons to be cheerful!

I'm always slow with my Reasons To Be Cheerful (Planet Penny usually starts the cheerfulness ball rolling on a Wednesday or a Thursday) so today I'm going to cram in three super-quick reasons while having my coffee, before going to get the kids from school.

*deep breath*

1) Stargazing Live - granted I didn't get to watch it actually live ('Kids! Go. To. Bed!') but either on delay or on iplayer, but ah, how I enjoyed it! Thought-provoking, funny, fascinating, intriguing. Shame it's so often cloudy here, particularly in January.
Oh, I took this picture last week on a clear evening (well, afternoon really).

I watched the 2nd programme on iplayer with the Boy yesterday and he was mostly fascinated and is quite keen that we take his telescope up to Granny and Grandpa's next time we go as we'll get more of a dark sky there.

2) Flowers! Yes, more :-D. My tulips are past their best now but I've hung onto them for their weird sculptural shapes and rich colours:

but I've also got some daffs! Excuse my excessive enthusiasm for a moment but I love daffodils - the colour, the shape, the smell:
.. the shadows they cast on themselves..

Buying flowers is a bit of an indulgence but so worth it when the sun comes out briefly and the windowsill just lights up with colour.

3) Shade cards:

That's the Jamieson's one

All those colours, all those possibilities! I've been playing about with knitters' graph paper this week, doing some Fair Isle/colourwork designs. It's not something I've really done before (the designing that is) but is very absorbing. I've got a few ideas in my head at the moment so the shade card, aside from being a thing of beauty in its own right, is a way of focussing the ideas a bit in terms of colours and how they work together. And seeing the colours is quite inspirational too. Sorry, went off in a daydream there..

Right, gotta go!

Reasons To Be Cheerful

1) Locorten-Vioform. Ear-drops that is. Wonderful stuff for those of us with recurrently scabby ears!

2) Science. Or Potions, depending on your point of view. A bit of silly science with the kids! In a vase, white vinegar, food colouring, glitter and washing-up liquid:

..and a spoonful of bicarbonate of soda:

Add a sinister cackle:

Mwahahahaha!

Actually the one we did with yellow food-colouring looked the most sinister (quite sulphurous) but I didn't take pictures of that one.

3) Sunsets. I went for a walk with the Boy this afternoon and we took pictures of the sunset. It was cold out, still frosty in places, but very calm and beautiful.

I like that picture, it looks surprisingly rural (it's not).

This week went so quickly. The kids went back to school on Monday and have settled back into the routine. I've had a sore throat and sore ears all week so have been doing a fair bit of knitting and crochet. The razor-shell scarf is growing slowly but I've memorised the lace row now which speeds things up a bit. The crochet is beginning to click - it still looks wonky but is more crochet-like at least! The only hook I could find was really the wrong size for the wool I'm practising with, so I bought a set of gorgeously coloured metal crochet hooks off ebay and now I can crochet with anything (probably even cobwebs with the teeny-tiny one):

Shiny!

Those hooks are pretty much a Reason To Be Cheerful in their own right! I'm so shallow :-D.

Anthropomorphising flowers

Well that one's just a tulip. Pretty, mind.

But this, this one, is applauding. Or swooning? Or maybe facepalm!

I lead a dull life don't I?

So, today. Making Monday. I got the shopping, housework, lunch and stuff out of the way, and prepared to knit. Like Natalie of the Yarn Yard I've never really got to grips with lace knitting so I'm trying to encourage myself to get out of my knitting comfort zone with it a bit. At the moment I'm doing the razor-shell lace scarf, as mentioned before - only one line of lace, repeated over and over so easing me gently out towards the rough currents and shoals of lace knitting where there be charts, yarr, and x almost certainly does not mark the spot but more likely some tricky sl1-kfb-while-standing-on-your-head-psso operation. But I made the mistake of switching the television on, having a look at what's on catch-up and saying to myself 'Ooh, I'll just have quick look at that Borgen thing, people have been talking about that on Ravelry/Twitter - subtitles though so I'll only watch a couple of minutes..' Yeah. Some time later with the remote still in my hand I realised that it was finished and it was almost school pick-up time so no time for knitting. I'm so glad I did though.

Some thoughts on this:
1) Media bint character really does look like Rose Tyler's Danish cousin as somebody on Ravelry pointed out. Uncannily. Which reminds me, does anybody remember The Tenth Kingdom? My Beloved dubbed the character of Sally Peep 'Alice Tinker's slutty cousin' and everytime we've seen Lucy Punch in something since that's all we can say. Mind you in Hot Fuzz it was pretty accurate.

2) Subtitled Danish or Swedish drama is weird because it sounds familiar enough for me to forget that I don't actually speak the language and do need to read the subtitles. So no lace knitting while it's on.

As well as the lace knitting thing I also have a tentative not-quite-resolution thing to get to grips with crochet a bit more as well. I sort of managed granny squares last year, but I want to make a granny stripe blanket eventually (even if it's only a little one for the cats' basket) so last night was spent doing wonky treble clusters while watching Pride and Prejudice on DVD.


This was another Reason To Be Cheerful - I am fortunate enough to have secured a gentleman who will willingly and happily watch the whole of Pride and Prej over two consecutive evenings. Not so surprising really as he's addicted to Patrick O'Brian novels which are the nearest male equivelant I've encountered. I won't show you a picture of my wonky crochet, but honestly, it is improving. So, woohoo!

Since the ginger-wine/keyboard interface incident I'm still using my Beloved's noisy keyboard so I shall stop typing there before I drive him to distraction.

Reasons To Be Cheerful

1. Knitting. I've started a razor-shell lace scarf with wool my brother bought me for my birthday. I've now learned not to try the lace rows when I'm watching television. Last night I managed to get one stitch short on one lace row, sorted that, then got four too many on the next. No idea how.. So I took it to soft-play with me today (Miss M was at a birthday party there), ripped it back four or five rows to tackle what was possibly a hole or possibly just a very loose stitch but was bugging me slightly either way, and got it all sorted. So satisfying. See, if I never messed up my knitting I'd never have the satisfaction of being able to fix it! (Pollyanna moment no.1).

The thumb bandage is because I cut the tip of my thumb chopping something and the wool keeps catching on the sticking plaster. This is the unattractive best option when knitting.


2. Opening a new bottle of brown sauce. My Beloved made the dinner, fish and oven chips (we were feeling tired and lazy), to which of course the only sensible accompaniment besides vinegar is brown sauce. I'm so mundane aren't I?



3. Flowers. I bought some tulips the other day (this picture is from Thursday I think - note the rare blue sky!) and even though they're doing that alarming tulip sag they do quickly they're so cheerful and happy looking. I've had a sore throat for several days and haven't really been out so a bit of colour indoors has been Just What The Doctor Probably Would Have Ordered. (Pollyanna moment number two)

Despite the sore throat I'm actually spoiled for Reasons To Be Cheerful choice at the moment (Pollyanna flounces off in a huff at being outclassed), even if the brown sauce one makes you suspect otherwise, so I may even do another post tomorrow, once the kids are safely back at school. I've loved the school holidays but a return to routine is something to look forward to in its own way.

Reasons To Be Cheerful

1. I like making pomanders. Okay, I get masses of indentations on my fingers, but it's worth it for the smell. Mmmmmm.. I also like my new table-cloth!

2. I was in Argos at quarter to ten this evening and Sainsbury just after that, but I'm done now! Apart from things like veg which My Beloved will get tomorrow. Bliss bliss bliss.

3. There's nothing quite like the smug glow you get from going to a Zumba class on the 22nd of December!

Reasons To Be Cheerful

What I was going to say for my first Reason was that, looking on the bright side, at least Hurricane Bawbag got rid of the last of the snow. And then this happened:


This week has been All About The Weather. But it is December after all.

So reasons reasons reasons..

1) Pottering around and crafting - sewing owls, doing a bit of knitting and making stuff with paper. This has been taking my mind off the stress of shopping centres in December. There's nothing quite like a panic attack in Primark is there?

2) The positive side of shopping centres in December is meeting up with my friend L for coffee and chocolate and orange tart (*drool*) and a mooch around the shops.

3) Sleep. I love sleep. I don't get nearly enough of it. I love my bed. I love cold nights with snow falling outside, a book and a hot-water-bottle. I love falling asleep with a cat curled up next to my feet. The cats used to be barred from our room - we even put a lock on the door because they could shove it open, but now that they've stopped pouncing on feet at random times in the night and just curl up purring we've decided to let them in if they want. They seem happier.
I came home from the dreaded shopping centre today with much-needed new pyjamas and some brushed cotton trousers which are described as 'loungewear'. So pyjama bottoms for people who don't usually wear pjs. They're a sort of pastel tartan and not deeply flattering for those of us blessed with curves, but so warm and comfortable. Yay for winter!

Reasons To Be Cheerful-ish

Yay! It's the 1st of December! (Yes, you knew that).

And it's week 7 of Planet Penny's Reasons To Be Cheerful! I don't think I've done seven weeks of it yet though - have I? I think I missed the first week.

The wind has dropped a bit and it's not actually raining - at the moment anyway. It was sleeting as I dropped the kids off at school (bitterly regretted forgetting my woolly hat). And I've just gone round the house and changed my many calenders over to their new pictures! I love turning to a new calendar page. So that's my first reason to be cheerful. Do you like our Santa Claus in that picture? Miss Mouse made it yesterday - the schools were closed due to the strike, and we were stuck inside due to colds and grim weather, so apart from bickering, telly and the Wii there was a little making going on. I like his curly beard!

Reason number two is a much delayed ta-daa! Finally, finally, the item fondly known as Bogroll Barbie (though she's not a Barbie, she's a cheap pound-shop 'fashion doll' equivalent) is FINISHED! Hurrah, huzzah, rejoicing in the streets!

I painted the base yesterday, and there she is in all her glory, on her little pedestal! Loo-roll dolls are just the most bonkers creation aren't they? I sometimes wonder who first thought 'You know, that toilet roll really needs a crinoline!'

I like this picture a lot - it's pleasingly strange..

Reason three - well, I don't want to jinx it, but we should, fingers crossed, touch wood, being cautiously optimistic here, be getting our cavity wall insulation done tomorrow. I'm being very cautious about this because we've had people out three times to do this, but this time.. well, let's hope. In any case, we're reasonably well-prepared for winter:

This time last year we were up to our oxters in snow - well, slight exaggeration but looking back at my 365 blog, this is how things were on the 1st of December 2010. Chilly. I'm working on my mum's premise which is that if we're well-prepared for winter it won't be such a bad one!

You know what? We forgot the advent calenders this morning! Something to look forward to once the kids are home from school :-D.

More Reasons To Be Cheerful

Reasons To Be Cheerful are all I ever post at the moment - though that's not a bad thing of course!

I'm doing a lot of bloggy catching-up this morning, which is lovely. I seem to have missed a lot though! It's been a hectic week - my Beloved had a stinking cold and was off work for a couple of days, then he passed it on to me (so generous!) and the kids have had a busy week. But despite the snifflings and snufflings, I have Reasons!

Reason 1 - Miss Mouse had her very first dance exams this week. Due to a mix-up in the paperwork she actually did four when she was supposed to do three - she ended up doing Disco as well as Tap, Majorettes and Cheerleading - but did very well! Shh, I'm not telling her yet, so it's a surprise when she goes to her class this week, but she's passed them all. Actually I get the impression that with the little ones you'd probably have to have two left feet and hit the examiner over the head with a baton to fail, but nevertheless I'm very proud of her. Not least because it's so very far outwith my experience! Anyway, here she is as she was about to go in to the cheerleading exam:

A blur of pompoms

2) The Boy's tooth fell out! It hung in there until Tuesday lunchtime though, persistent thing that it was. It got to the rather gross state of being able to spin back to front and he was getting thoroughly fed-up with it but persistence on his part paid off. And very fortunately their school photos weren't taken until Wednesday morning. No picture of the momentous dental occasion as at the moment I only have one very blurry gap-toothed picture taken under electric light - it's so murky when they head off to school and much the same when they come home that photography in decent light is impossible during the week. And they're off at their Grandma's so I can't take one now - shame as it's a bright morning. We've had a wet week and three days of strong winds so the sunshine today is wonderful. The cats are outside making up for lost time! They were most offended by the weather and there was a bit of regression to climbing the curtains.

3) Tomato - there is an actual tomato on the Boy's tomato plant:

I think I may have mentioned it a few weeks ago, when it was still green, but look at it now! I never did get round to repotting the plant, but it doesn't seem to mind too much.


Secret knitting is progressing nicely, Christmas shopping is progressing (but I wouldn't say nicely), and I'm going to 'feed' the Christmas cake. I might even do some mordanting this morning..

Reasons To Be Cheerful

Reason 1. Wheeeeeeee - it's my trashy-telly-time-of-the-year! It's I'm A Celebrity..Get Me Out Of Here time! There's no defending it - I just love it. I love the the way Dec says 'may cost considerably more', I love z-list celebs I haven't heard of eating bugs, I love the inventive ridiculousness of the trials and celebrity chests. Add Stuart Hall wetting himself laughing and it'd be It's A Knockout all over again. I love to wonder whether I could do better than the celebs at the trials - in the case of Sinitta's one yesterday, almost certainly!

Reason 2. That incredible feeling of freedom you get when you get called for jury service but they don't need you after all! I thought I'd be spending much of this week at the High Court in Glasgow, but instead I've been doing things like Christmas shopping and going out for lunch with a friend.

Reason 3. The Boy has the wibbliest wobbliest wobbly front tooth ever. It should fall out tonight or tomorrow. The school photos are being done at the start of the week - will my boy have the most engaging gappy-toothed smile for his school photo? Will he? Will he?

Has anybody else got the same problem as me with blogging in November and December? Which is that I'm making things which I desperately want to witter on about, but they're Christmas presents so I can't blog about them in case the recipients reads my blog. Oh the frustration! I'll have to have a ta-daa binge on Boxing Day!

And just to finish, a picture which makes me smile and which I should have had for my last Reasons To Be Cheerful post:

Tap-shoes and scabby knee!

Reasons To Be Cheerful

They're very small and domestic reasons to be cheerful this week!

1. My Peerie Flooers hat is progressing nicely. I've done virtually no knitting for the last week or so for one reason or another, so it's nice to get back to it.


2. Miss Mouse is enjoying her dance classes and it makes both laugh and smile to see her practising in the middle of the living-room. I never thought I'd have a child who does tap, majorettes and cheerleading! I was going to take a picture of her brand-new tap shoes to illustrate my point (she's so excited about them, she took them to school to show her teacher!) but it's too dark now.

3. Weird low winter light makes me smile. I took this picture yesterday when there was no direct sunlight in the garden but indirect sunlight (bouncing off the house) was lighting up what's left of the nasturtiums.

Looking at other blogs today and seeing various beautiful poppy pictures for Armistice Day, it occurred to me that I was sure I'd planted poppy seeds this year, but none came up. Odd. I'd thought they were supposed to be fairly straight-forward to grow. Maybe next year!

Poppies at Kittochside, June 2011.

Reasons To Be Cheerful: the search for optimism

It's Reasons To Be Cheerful time again and I'm discovering that for me the end of the week is not the optimum time for optimism! I've had a peely-wally Miss Mouse off school yesterday and today so a lot of my time and energy has been taken with that. But there are always reasons, so here we go:

1) Things we'd forgotten. My brother recently got a slide scanner and has been working through a box of colour slides (remember them?) that our parents re-found among their stuff. They'd thought the slides were long lost so were delighted, but as their slide projector was long lost they'd no way of seeing what there was. So most evenings my brother scans a few slides and bungs them in Dropbox for us to look at. Here's a classic:

These are old pictures that haven't seen the light of day for decades (that's me in that picture). Some of the slides have quite a bit of damage to them - see the purple spots on that one? But just to see them at all is fantastic!

2) A bit of silly telly. New season of The Big Bang Theory - yay!

3) A smidge of sunshine and a coffee outside is better than nothing. I like being outside but sometimes there's not much opportunity. I've borrowed this idea this from The Philosophy of Lists, another Making Winterer, who has decided to try to have a cuppa outside every day. I know I won't manage it every day - the climate and my garden are against me - but every half-decent day I'll make the effort. Today I sneaked out into the garden while Miss M was watching Numberjacks and bloody blissful it was too (stir crazy? me?). I did the same thing yesterday and it was somewhat less blissful. Cat2 discovered she could climb up the old bit of trellis (remnant of a piece of fence) in the corner and get up onto the garage roof.


Getting down of course was less easy. It all got a bit farcical - Miss Mouse was feverish and asleep so I was tiptoeing around trying to extend a ladder quietly* while hissing at the cat. I got a ladder up but she was having much too much fun scampering about the roof to come anywhere near me. Eventually she made her own way down but I don't know how. Teleportation most likely. This cat has ladder phobia - the noise of ladders that is. Every time there are window-cleaners are in the street she runs round the house growling out of all the windows. Maybe this has cured her! What's funny about the growling is that our other cat, her brother, has picked up the habit from her and now thinks that ladders are a legitimate threat!

So, yeah, peaceful cup of coffee in the fresh air!

*Not possible.

Reasons To Be Cheerful

Thanks to Planet Penny I'm looking for Reasons To Be Cheerful, but as yesterday was just one of those days, it's been harder than usual to think of any.

However I'm a relatively glass-half-full person so here we go :-).

1) There is still some colour in the garden! There was some sunshine and blue sky yesterday morning so I grabbed the opportunity to take a few pictures:






2) The other day I hauled out all wool I'd dyed myself to have a look - actually I was looking for the blackberry-dyed stuff to compare it to the elderberry-dyed but once I got everything out I just had to take a few photographs!


And it really gives me a boost to see how much I've done with so many different bits of vegetation, and how much I've learned in the process. When the kids came home from school we spent some happy (non-bickering!) time looking through and they decided which were their favourites. Miss Mouse, predictably went for the pinks:

(balls at top - blackberry; middle skein - red cabbage, I think; bottom skein: elderberry)

..while the Boy decided his favourite is the soft orange at the bottom of this picture:

I like the brown in the middle best I think.

So, a bag full of naturally-dyed happiness. I'm easily pleased :-D.

3) Looking at something I'd cast on the other day I decided that the cast-on wasn't really stretchy enough so this morning I had a look at YouTube for stretchier cast-ons (my usual cast-on is the long-tail thumb cast-on). And I found one excellent one involving a crochet hook (which I notice a nippy purist has cast aspersions on in the comments - come on, most knitters have a crochet hook lying around for picking up dropped stitches, and can learn how to do one chain in two minutes with YouTube, it's hardly taking you over to the Dark Side) and another one which took me a minute or two to get my head round but could be useful. So my third Reason To Be Cheerful is for the learning of new skills, however small!

You know if type 'cast-on' often enough it looks really weird. Also, do any other Scots habitually think of 'YouTube as 'ya choob'?