Cinderella

 It was lovely. We both really really enjoyed it. No pics sadly because I forgot my phone although you're probably only supposed to take pictures of the curtain calls, and that's a shame because the sets and costumes were magical and you'll just have to take my word for it. Unless you've seen it yourself of course. 

We hadn't been past the reception desk at the McRobert Centre before and the cinema wasn't easy to find. Possibly because all the spaces are designated by the use of the word 'house' on the end; playhouse, woodhouse, filmhouse and various others. Once you know then filmhouse makes sense as a cinema as playhouse makes sense for a theatre but it's not really obvious. However once we found it it was warm ( thank goodness, it was bloomin' bitter out up here on Tuesday evening) and comfortable, and the sightlines are great.

We had braced ourselves for the continuity person and annoying featurettes that the ROH will insist on inflicting on audiences during the intervals of their filmcasts, but we even enjoyed those this time. I wonder if the ballet ones are generally more acceptable than the opera ones? The man introducing it all was a former dancer himself and was quietly knowledgeable and informative and the three little features were all interesting. The least interesting one was Darcey Bussell talking to the two principal dancers but it was OK. The second one was a conversation between the two men who danced the stepsisters and the third one was the set and costume designers talking about their inspiration. So no rants from  me on that  topic this time. We thought about going again for The Nutcracker but it's in December, naturally enough and December is looking quite busty so we probably won't. 

A Word About Advents

 Yes, it is that time of year again - almost advent season, so I thought I'd run through this years.

The Bonne Maman jam one I've already posted a picture of , I did that when it arrived at what seemed like an alarmingly early date. 

We are not having a Yankee Candle advent this year. This is mainly because earlier in the year I bought a wax melt burner and I have bought some Christmassy scented wax melts to go in it. Incidentally I love my burner and have it 'on' every evening just now. 

The OH has an advent calendar all to himself this year which I bought for him on a recent visit to the supermarket (I know, could I be any more generous!!) But he was pleased. 

for a man who doesn't like honey ( or bee spit as he calls it!) he is inordinately fond of Toblerone. 

I don't know whether I ever mentioned here the fact that a while back I had a sticker subscription, which is just what it sounds like, you pay a company money every month and every month they send you a packet of stickers. After a couple of years I cancelled the subscription because I had what felt like all the stickers I would ever need for  a lifetime and beyond but this year I have treated myself to their advent calendar. It comes in a specially designed  folder - 

here's the front cover

and here's the back

and inside are 24 envelopes, each equally lovely, with a sheet of stickers inside. 

But Anne, I hear you say, are there no yarn advents this year? Oh, come on! Would it be advent without a yarn advent? Would it be Christmas without the OH buying me a yarn advent as my main present? No it would not, so naturally there are yarn advents. 

I chose to gift myself a weekly advent from Beth at Beehive Yarns. The theme is La Vie en Rose and here it is. Beth is wonderful at presentation, her colour choices really resonate with me and her yarn is lovely so I'm looking forward to unwrapping this. 

And from the OH I am getting a Nutcracker themed daily advent from Caroline at Yarn Unique (she of the artist's monthly club that I have had some of this year). I've had other bits and pieces from her over the years and she has never disappointed, not to mention that I am, as previously noted here, a sucker for the Nutcracker so I am really looking forward to this one. It arrived in rather splendid packaging only available to early bird orderers, and I didn't manage a photo before the OH squirrelled it away but there will be one on 1st December. Which is closer than almost everyone thinks. 

Talking of The Nutcracker we are going out this evening to watch a filmcast of the Royal Ballet's Cinderella; the very ballet we tried to see in Kirkwall last Christmas but which was cancelled due to unexplained  'technical issues' . The venue here is the MacRobert Arts Center at Stirling University where we haven't been before so I expect I'll be reporting on that in the near future. Life has been quiet of late, which has done me good, but things are picking up pace towards Christmas and I feel I'm now ready to embrace that and be busy again. 

Some Local Wildlife

Courtesy partly of the oak tree that sits just beyond our front fence, plus the recent installation of a bird feeder in our front garden, we get quite a variety of bird life here. 

Crows,

Lots and lots of woodpigeons

Jays! (Not blue jays as per the OH's baseball team, but even so.)They're very pretty and we get a pair visiting every morning

There's a robin as well which we haven't managed to photograph yet, and some other, so far unidentified, small birds that are visiting the feeder. 

As is the squirrel!

Many thanks to the OH for a fabulous photo. Again we have  a pair, but rarely see the second one. This one though is often around, especially during the mornings when he scampers about at great speed, stopping every now and then to retrieve and nibble at a nut. Great fun to watch. 

And occasionally we are visited by some local roe deer. I've yet to manage a good picture of these; the first time they came by  the time we had seen them and I'd found my phone all I got a picture of was their fleeing rear ends! The second time I did rather better, although the pictures are far from perfect. Still they're lovely to see, and not exactly what you expect on a suburban estate, even on the fringes.

Oh Look! I never finished Florence

 I suppose there's a metaphysical sense in which you never finish Florence but on a more prosaic note there was one last day there that I haven't written up yet. 

This was another serendipitous thing. It was our last day, it was a bit damp and we thought we would wander down to the heart of the old city and just see where our footsteps took us. Given that the weather turned from drizzle to drench about the time we made it the Uffizi portico, where our footsteps took us was into the Palazzo Vecchio. It hadn't been on our list but it was the nearest place that simultaneously promised interest and refuge from the rain, so in we went. 

I'm so glad we did. It's amazing. 

Like everywhere else it - 

was stuffed with tourists

housed some amazing art, both pictures ....

...and friezes

boasted amazing views over the city towards the hills

and unlike some other places which were so overwhelmed by tourists that there was no historical atmosphere left, this one struck a chill. This is the Court of the Five Hundred, the centre of Medici power in the city.  The picture was taken from a gallery looking down into it and nothing can prepare you for the scale of this room. Too easy to imagine how a malefactor, or even someone who had just been overheard disagreeing with a Medici, would feel being escorted into this room to face 'justice'. 

And that's it for the adventures in Florence, but there's a postscript. We have booked another Italian holiday for next spring. It's a short organised tour which  will take us to Arezzo, Assisi, Siena Florence and Rome. Obviously very short visits to each one I'd rather have gone to Pisa or Lucca than Florence again, just because it would be somewhere different and nothing says we can;t go to either of those places under our own steam at a later date. 

I'm not sure even I believed it ....

 ...when I said No More Cats after we lost Markko earlier this year. 

Anyway, meet Cosimo (and yes, it does appear we're working our way through the Medici family for our cat names)

There are very many pros to not having a cat, but it turns out that even altogether they don't outweigh the huge con that is missing having a cat about the place. 

It was with some trepidation that we took ourselves to the local cat shelter on Sunday to view their available cats. They had put up a post on their Facebook page earlier this week saying they had lots of cats in all of a sudden and if you were thinking of getting one maybe come along to one of their weekend rehoming shifts. 

We were worried mainly about the burden of choice but in the event we needn't have worried. We were asked what we were looking for and we said we weren't fussy really because all our previous cats had just turned up on the doorstep and then moved in, and when we said that the lady we were talking to said well let me show you Harley. Harley had been living as a stray for a while and hadn't liked it one little bit, and the fact that he had to fight lots of other stray cats to get himself anything to eat has apparently left him hating Every Other Cat in the Wurld. We are suckers for this kind of sob story so it was as well that we loved Harley as soon as we met him. We agreed to take him, subject to the necessary checks. We visited him at the Shelter on Monday and Tuesday and on Wednesday (yesterday), rather sooner than anticipated,  we were given the all clear to bring him home. So we did. And renamed him, obvs. 

He's very affectionate, a little bit vocal now he's home and the first long haired cat we have ever had. Luckily he loves to be brushed. He also appears to approve of having a large house to wander around with lots and lots of places to curl up unseen: we left him in the living room last night with a light, food etc and discovered him this morning under the spare room bed. Oh well, who doesn't love a game of cat Hide and Seek first thing? 

We knew they were coming so we baked a cake ....

 In fact we made several cakes in preparation for visits from our son and my sister. 

It was the son's birthday and he had requested that the OH do him a Viking Ship. The OH had made  this on a couple of occasions in Orkney but it was a long time ago. However since it was a special request he had a go and here it is

In previous incarnations it used the sail and shields from a Playmobile Viking ship but if we still have that somewhere we don't know quite where, so it was all done out of choux pastry and creme pat. It was delicious and the boy took the four little extra choux puffs home in a box! 

My own contributions were much more mundane, being a lemon drizzle 

and a carrot cake

I don't know if they ran away with the Playmobile Viking ship, not to mention my kitchen apron, but my 1lb loaf tins were nowhere to be seen and haven't been since we moved so I had to put the lemon drizzle mixture in a 2 lb tin. While this isn't the end of the world, it wasn't 100% successful, as it mucked up the cooking time and that was already problematic since the ovens here don't have a great deal of calibration temperature wise. There's a 150 and a 200 and anything in between is guess work. I hope that eventually we'll replace them because I do miss the lovely baking oven I had in Orkney.

That said it was fine and the carrot cake was yummy. Also, while out with my sister at a local garden center we found  some 1 lb loaf tins and I treated myself to a couple. So the next lot should be better. I need to reorganise the baking cupboards as, despite our best intentions when we moved, some kitchen stuff was placed where 'it would do for now', and although it may have 'done for then' I'm getting a bit stressed with having baking utensils and ingredients in about 4 different places. Sounds like a job for that empty time between Christmas and New Year. 

Projects and Wool Stats for October.

 Oh this is ugly! Not as ugly as it might have been but not good. 

No finished projects! 

Wool in 700g, wool out 198g, net increase for the month 502g, and net decrease for the year reduced to 5338g. 

Most of the Wool In was the Little Grey Cells club; there was the usual 150g for the three months plus I had ordered 200g of undyed to go with it.  The colours of the club are lovely but they are very bright and so the blanket I am using them for needed something to calm it down. All the wool out was work I did on that.

Of the rest I had the Debbie Abrahams Bunting Kit and I am well through that. Then I bought 200g of baby 'wool' to make a baby blanket for the daughter of a friend who is expecting her first baby in the spring, and I've just broken into the second ball of four. And none of the wool was an impulse buy, it all had  a purpose, which is a good thing. 

That said today has thrown up a multitude of problems and there's a lot of lovely pre-Christmas indie dyer stuff out there, so I'm hoping I can keep away from the Buy buttons. There will be advents arriving shortly and I'm off to a Knitting Show at the end of the month so hopefully the thought of  both of those things will keep me strong for now. 

And November should see some finished things; more time inside, some planned socks and the other two in progress projects inching towards completion.