More Weather Woes

 In prospect, rather than actually here yet. 

We've been told to expect 80-90 mph winds tomorrow and that they will last until at least the weekend, so obviously we're not going to be going very far for a while. With this in mind we seized the opportunity to go out today, wandering along to Celina Rupp's for lunch. 

It wasn't anything special, I'd planned to have the soup but today it was tomato and I don't like tomato soup so opted for a toastie instead. Far too stuffed after that to have anything else and disappointingly they don't ring the changes on those much anyway. 

We were all for having a bit of a walk in St Mary's when we were done and we did, but it was rather shorter than we had anticipated due to a very cold wind. Still, that's three days in a row that we've gone out for a walk which we're probably going to be very pleased about if we're going to be stuck inside for the best part of a week from tomorrow. Of course the winds may turn out to be less severe than predicted, they often are. And that would be a Good Thing. 

Firth Park v2.0

 Back in 2021 I had this  photographic project where we went to Firth Park on the same day each month and I took a picture in the same spot, plus some close ups of anything that caught my eye and at the end of the year we had a picture of the changing seasons. I really enjoyed doing it and although I had planned to do something of the same sort with the  local beach in 2022 that plan never came to anything because I could never get really good pictures of the beach. 

I decided it might be fun to revisit Firth park this year and take the repeat photos from a different vantage point so yesterday we went over there and scouted out a good place. Very difficult to find somewhere without cars or houses, especially with the trees being mainly bare at this time of year, and where seasonal change is likely to show itself, but after some deliberation I chose a new spot, much higher than the previous one and looking in the opposite direction. I'm looking forward to seeing how this pans out over the next twelve months. Meanwhile here are this months pictures

A good start I think. 

An Alliterative Advent.

 

Let me say straight away that I wasn't going to do the Arran Aromatics Advent Calendar this year, and resisted well, despite all the e-mails they bombarded me with. And then they addressed me as a 'valued customer' and added a £10 off plus free postage offer and I caved. 

I did not in fact open it during advent. What with the yarn, the candles and the jam it seemed very OTT and I was playing catch up with most of those anyway to start with because of being in Stockholm for the first week of December. So I decided to wait until January and open it then because it would give me something to look forward to each day; January, in the normal way of things, being a bit lacking in the good things department.

Here's what was inside

There are a couple of bottles of eau de toilette at the front, you can just see their wooden tops in front of the candles. (Bad picture and lazy photographer who can't be bothered to go and take it again). Some new fragrances for both the candles and the washing stuff, and I was delighted to see only one bottle of hair conditioner, which I do not use, and only four bottles of body lotion which I do use, but sparingly. There was also a bottle of Machrie shower gel, which is my favourite AA fragrance, and oh, goody, goody, some matching soap. 

I'm glad I got this in the end; it helped me get up on dark January days and started my days with a little drop of delight. Which is  no  bad thing. 

We Went Out!

 We went to the cinema to see the Royal Opera House filmcast of Rusalka. 

It has to be said that we have a spotty success rate with these regular showings of opera and ballet from Covent Garden. Who can forget the horror that was Carmen in a gorilla suit which I wrote about here ? And then there was my recorded irritation with the 'helpful' inserts to Traviata here . And quite a lot of them we tend to be away for (no real surprise there!) Possibly our best experience was Matthew Bourne's Romeo and Juliet

But Rusalka is rarely performed and is a real favourite of mine so we went. I was prepared to clench my teeth and sit out the irritating fillers, but I should have reserved judgement because in fact the contributions from singers, conductor and the two women who did the directing and designing as a team were interesting, informative and insightful. Possibly this was due to a lack of poseur testosterone. Several singers commented on  how they had enjoyed a collaborative approach to the production. Lest I be accused of sexism I will say here and now that I know of a recent production closer to home that was directed by a woman who made everyone's lives an absolute misery and I'm not sure that the subsequent spectacular success of it necessarily reconciled everyone involved to the methods used to get there. Men aren't the only ones  who think they are god's gift to theatre and will everyone else just shut up and do what they say because if they want to use that frightful old cliché of gypsies dancing on tables then they will. 

I loved this. I enjoyed it from start to finish - and it's l-o-n-g; the playing,  the singing and the the acting were all first class ( although that should really be a given at Covent Garden ) My only very bijou problemette was with the wood nymph costumes, that looked a little bit like gone to seed brussel sprouts. Since the only photo I found was copyrighted I can't post it here but a search of Google images should bring it up for anyone interested. In fact the costumes in general were the 'weakest link' (ha!) of the whole production.

A good night out, even though it was a late return, and the OH needs to hope Stockholm will do Rusalka soon as that will guarantee him a return visit to the city. Although we are gong back in March anyway. 

It tends to be all about the craft in January

 and occasionally walks, but not in our current weather.

Now that Advent/Christmas are both safely behind us I can post pictures of the things I made for the Advent swap that one of the Ravelry groups I'm in organises. Four parcels, one each for the four weekends before Christmas. There's a very limited budget for all the swaps in this group, which is more about recycling, and making than spending money, so four parcels isn't as horrendously expensive as perhaps it sounds. 

One of my parcels was a miscellaneous mix of craft materials so I didn't  make anything myself to put in that one, but the other three parcels had things in that I had made especially. 

There were socks

there were fingerless mitts

and there was a shawl

I gave myself full marks for the shawl because there was an awful lot of wrap and drop stitches which is one of my least favourite techniques; too easy to miss  a wrap in either direction and really really difficult to put right if you go wrong. It calls for a lot of concentration on my part. However I stuck with it because it fitted the theme of the parcel it was in perfectly. 

While on the craft theme, my 'go-through' of Box 1 is proceeding quite well. I may do a 'one month done, one month to go' round up at the end of Jan. 

Weather permitting we might actually be going out this evening! and if we do I'll report on that tomorrow. 

It's the little things....

 ...that grind you down.

I applied for a new passport yesterday. This is supposed to be easier than it was because - ta-dah! you can now do it on-line. When the OH did it a while back you could even take the necessary photograph on your computer at the relevant moment of the form filling. What could be easier?

What indeed? I mentioned that I was planning to do the application to a group of friends on Facebook. Got a couple of horror stories back about the photo.It had taken one multiple attempts to get one that the  was acceptable. Another  had so many failed attempts they gave up and went to one of those booth things. Good grief I thought, can it really be that hard?

I am here to tell you it can be and it was. The form filling bit was fairly easy, but oh! the problems I had with the photograph. You can no longer sit back in your (neutral coloured) office chair and let your computer take this for you. Oh no. You have to take one and upload it. Then it gets checked to make sure it fulfills all the requirements. And then it grades your photograph for the chance of success of being accepted for your passport. 

What a palaver. We really only have one room with neutral coloured walls with sufficient natural light to take  a photo in the winter daytime. It was tricky to find a bit of the wall that I could stand against - we tried several, which all involved moving furniture. Then the machine kept spitting out our attempts; we went from poor to fair and finally to good. This involved retries with various combinations of open and closed blinds all around the room. Personally I cannot see very much  difference between the two that got rejected and the one that got accepted; they all make me look like an ageing, tired and miserable cow of a person but if they won't let you smile...

Anyway in the end it was done. Form completed, photo accepted, fee paid. And then it told me I couldn't get my new passport until I sent the old one back. So my question is; if I have to send them something through the post what is the point of an on-line application process? A friend said it's like the self service check outs in supermarkets; it saves them paying someone to look at the form and put in the data at the other end. 

Well, weather permitting the old one will be off to the post office this morning. And in due course my lovely maroon coloured EU passport will be replaced with a blue one ( which is actually black) and which of course was the sole reason we all went through the trauma that was Brexit. And means that I have heard dozens of people moaning in airports about how they have to join the very long queue marked 'other passports'. I'm often tempted to ask them if they voted for Brexit. Although I don't. 

So, today I have been making ....

 ....cards

I find it time consuming, but relaxing.

Lest you think I am indulging in all this recent not-knitting in an attempt to avoid cleating my wool I can say that I am in fact knitting away with a will and have also managed to unload some of the wool from Box 1 in other directions, and my wool output is much higher than my input this month already. The input wasn't me even buying anything, I got given a ball of sock wool in a swap. In theory my yarn purchases this year will be minimal. 

In other news, my candle burned beautifully but there wasn't enough scent in it, so I'll know to up that next time.

Also the snow has gone. Hurrah! We have a few hours respite before storm Isha/Inna/whatever hits, with southerly winds (hello migraine) of up to 85 mph. 

Well, this was something new to try

 

yes it's a tin. and inside ...

my first attempt at a home made candle. 

I'm quite pleased with this. There were a few problems - like the scent not coning out of the bottle dripper  properly and then fearing that I had blocked the sink with some cooling wax, although I couldn't think how it could have happened. And the top isn't flat. 

But for a first attempt I'm pleased with it. I put enough colour in it so that it wasn't wishy washy and enough scent that it smells and I shall burn it this evening and see how it goes. 

And how did I come to be making a candle at all? I was inspired by a You Tube vlog where a dyer I follow was making candles and so the OH bought me a kit for Christmas. It had four of the tins, and more than enough supplies to make four candles, and four  different colours and four different scents. 

Sadly the jug in which you are supposed to melt the wax doesn't work on our hob as it's an induction one, so that I had to put it in a water bath. And it's also a bit small for purpose. So next time I'll try using the oven and if that's not totally satisfactory look for a small pan, preferably with a lip, that works on the induction hob.

Delighted to report that after the OH dismantled the bits of pipe beneath the sink he couldn't see any wax blocking anything and the liberal application of some hot water to the pipe outside seemed to cure the problem so possibly it was frozen. Which really wouldn't be surprising, given the temperatures over the last few days. 

I am not so delighted to report that we still have snow, although it is rapidly turning to slush and ice, which is in some ways worse, and we are forecast high winds developing from this afternoon until at least Sunday. With rain. Oh joy. 

It Is Done.

 

And I think in a couple of days I will be over the trauma and just be pleased with myself for persevering and producing something that actually is quite amazing. 

There is a matching hat and I have sufficient wool left over to knit it, but I don't think I'll be tackling it for a while.  Maybe for next winter? 

Jusr a quick one today

 about jigsaw puzzles.

Last time we were in Glasgow we picked up a puzzle my sister was lending me which she had left at the flat and I managed to get it finished a couple of days before Christmas. Which was a good thing as we then needed the table for Christmas dinner. 

I got several new ones at Christmas and I have already completed this one. A sister to the Dinner with Monet one that I did a while back this is Dinner with Matisse. It was interesting that it was a degree more difficult than the Manet one because I'm not as familiar with Matisse's work as I am with Monet's, so that the parts of the puzzle that are basically reproductions of his pictures were unknown and so had to be looked at harder. 

I'm currently working my way through anther one in the same series Dinner with Frida. I can say it's a riot of colour, in fact such a riot its a bit painful on the eyes to be honest. I know nothing about Kahlo beyond the fact that she had thick eyebrows and was Mexican so possibly I should put in a bit of research. Picture to come when the puzzle is done.

Meanwhile 

We still have snow. In fact we have more snow. I managed to get to the hairdresser's yesterday and came away feeling ten years younger, and looking it too I suspect. But from tomorrow basically everything is shut. So we'll just have to hunker down, keep the fire going and sit it out. Still better this month than next, given that we have two trips south boked in February. 

Also despite all intentions to the contrary I  picked up the Finnish jumper again. The too tight neckband has now been taken out and the next thing to do is to decrease to a more sensible and larger number of stitches for it, and then reknit it. I may look at it again today. Or I may not. We'll see. I know it's almost finished, but I don't know how sanguine I could be if I tried and failed a third time. 

 

Not the Post I'd Planned to Write

 So I was expecting todays' post to be a very celebratory one because I thought that yesterday I would finish the Finnish jumper for the OH. All I had left to do was graft the underarm stitches and weave in the ends and bingo! the job was done. 

Well things didn't go according to plan. Grafting live stitches is not my favourite job, nor is it one I'm particularly good at, because whenever I can I substitute a three needle cast off instead. So I don't get the practice. Three needle cast offs are not particularly useful for underarms though. I went wrong twice. Once was relatively easy to put right. The other wasn't. It took some heart-in-the-mouth cutting, some knotting, and some fudging, but in the end it was done and won't, I hope, unravel. 

Thrilled to bits I called the OH through, told him the glad tidings and got him to try it on. Well, try trying it on, because in the event, despite my having cast off with a needle a size larger than the one used for knitting, it wouldn't go over his head, because  ( I thought) the neckband cast off was too tight. I was not thrilled, especially as I had cast off in rib, and that's a real beggar to take out; and that was after the ten minutes it took me to find my woven in end and tease it out. I took out the cast off, and two more rows, and redid them with a needle one size larger again - and with much the same result. By now I was almost crying with frustration and I balled the whole thing up, threw it in the bag where it lives and said I was never   going to look at it again. 

Of course I will. I need to take out the whole neckband and the decrease row just underneath it and redo it with rather more stitches. Hopefully the OH will have the tact not to complain about the neck being loose once I finally finish it. I'd already had a monumental struggle with it, because when it was almost finished a few weeks ago he didn't like the neckline ; too low, too wide, so I had had to delve into Google and rummage around You Tube to find out how to recalculate all the yoke decreases so that it would end up high enough and narrow enough for him. Only to discover, as mentioned above, that it is in fact too narrow. 

I know Mr Kipling (not the cake baking one, the poetry writing one) recommends that you 'meet with triumph and disaster, and treat those two imposters both the same' but I don't have it in me. I don't get carried away by triumph, but disaster floors me. I had a hot chocolate and a whole bag of mini eggs, to help me recover my equilibrium and actually only succeeded  in making myself feel sick. And  obviously it did nothing to put right the inadequacies of the sweater neck.

It will be a while before I can face this mess once more but in the meantime, because we've been feeding birds regularly for a few months and because it has snowed the last couple of days, we now have something a bit more exotic than the usual murmuration of starlings arriving by the sunroom window to be fed. 

Not a good picture but he was running away at the time, having seen me through the window. I'll try for  abetter one another day. 

Meet Vanessa - Not a Kitten!

 

The rather unfortunate angle at which this photograph was taken does make her look rather like a loo seen from above, but actually this is Vanessa the Vacuum Cleaner. 

Very long term readers may remember Robbie the Robot who the OH bought as suitable only for spares from e-bay and  repaired. For several years Robbie trundled about the house hoovering the carpets but he became more and more erratic and eventually succumbed to old age, fatigue and too much fibre wrapped around his innards. 

For a while, several years in fact, we just  swapped to using an ordinary vacuum cleaner that relied upon a human being to push it around. The OH did most of the heavy lifting on that to begin with as I have had, since childhood, a deep aversion to the sound of hoover motors which tenses me up physically and mentally (unfortunate but there you go) . That said I did do my share especially over the last six months or so. 

We sometimes had rather desultory conversations about replacing Robbie with a new model but these things are expensive and the hoover that needed pushing about was doing perfectly well. And then not long before Christmas the OH found one that was on offer and after a bit of a chat we ordered it. 

My word, these things have come on since Robbie's day. Vanessa the Vac  can be infinitely programmed to do different bits of the house at different times. She has a voice and tells you what she's gong to do just before she does it. She not only hoovers but washes floors as well. (If only she could wield a duster I could rest safe in the knowledge that my housework was in safer and more regular hands then mine. She originally showed a tendency to bossiness, often commanding the OH to empty her dust collector in a very firm tone, nut he has since invested in a little accessory - her very own dust bin into which she can automatically discharge all the stuff she has picked up from the floor. 

I have to say that she's also quite quiet which I am grateful for. As is the cat, although he still regards her  with a mixture of fear and suspicion. You know those little videos you see on You Tube of cats merrily riding around the house on top[ of automatic vacuum cleaners? Not happening in this house! 

Happy Mail

 And no not yarn! 

I bought these in the Emma Bridgewater post Christmas sale and they arrived this morning. New winter mugs for self and OH and a pretty jug for me 'just because'. (Just because I like pretty jugs, no idea why)

EB had never been on my radar particularly until a friend did a referral/recommendation thing, mainly so that she could get some money off an order, sort of like pyramid selling but for the purposes of extending the business' mailing list. I've not actually had an opportunity to use the money off code they sent me in relation to that because the thing I wanted to buy was out of stock and isn't back in yet, but the e-mails keep coming and the post Christmas sale was particularly attractive. 

I know we're supposed to be decluttering but as a result of these new mugs several others are earmarked for the charity shop so the mug count will be showing a net decrease which is a plus, yes? 

A Good Morning for a Hanging!

 Several months ago I managed to get a very precious slot at the local picture framers and I took three pieces of cross stitch in to be framed. Some of these had been languishing unframed for literally years and I still have a backlog of finished pieces, not to mention all the ones that are yet to be finished - or even started! However, let's not dwell on the negative. 

Just before Christmas I got a call to say they were ready to be collected. I pointed out, quite genially, that it was the wrong time of year, because I knew it was going to be expensive, but there you go. We went in and picked them up and waved the contactless card at the machine and came home with these 

So this one I remember working on on  a train going to see a friend in Edinburgh. Our younger son would have been about 3 or 4 and he's now 33. I think it was already finished before we moved to Orkney in 2005, but I cold be misremembering. 

This is the youngest of the three as I bought it as a kit by mail order after one of our trips to Australia. This is the waratah, which is the state flower of New South Wales. At the time I had grand visions of doing a complete set of the state flowers which would have been seven in all.  That's obviously not happening, I love this one now it's finished though. 

This one was partly completed when we moved here in 2005 and hung about until I had the courage to chart 'Orkney' to replace the 'Country' which was on the original chart. After I finished it it hung about again waiting to be framed. 

We didn't hang these up as soon as we brought them home because in this house pictures get taken down to make way for Christmas decorations so putting up new ones was out of the question. However we had a relatively smooth time this morning getting them hung. I say relatively smooth because we didn't  enter into any interminable arguments about what should go where. And here they all are in situ. 

We also replaced a battery in  wall clock that's needed done for years as well and I filled a box with stuff for the charity shop. A good morning's work. 

A New Year Sort Out or

 ...start as you'd like to go on.

We're hoping to move in about 18 months time and I think before we do that we need to do some serious decluttering/divesting ourselves of stuff. There must be oodles of things in this house that it's not worth paying to move. 

Like many people who craft I also have a lot of tools and supplies that I don't use or haven't used for a while or haven't yet got around to using, so with a move on the visible horizon, this year has got to be the year I make serious inroads into all of that. 

I'm starting with the wool because that is what takes up most space, and what I'm most likely to be motivated to use to be honest. Most of my yarn lives in six large plastic boxes in my study and I aim by the end of the year to get what is left into three of them. This still leave a little bit of wool in a couple of other places but not in vast amounts. So the goal is to deal with one box every two months. I'm not expecting to use up all the wool in each box in two months, but hopefully by the time they have all had a good 'go-through' what is left will actually fit in three boxes. 

So last week I had a look in box 1. 

This was it when I started

Received wisdom is that you start by emptying your box/crate/drawer out onto a flat surface so that you can see what you've got, so I did that. All out on the bed. 

The next stage is to sort it out into three piles; to keep and use, to sell,  and to donate. I had four other piles; - works in progress, abandoned for whatever reason, empty project bags which shouldn't have been in there in the first place, project bags with cross stitch projects in them which  shouldn't have been in there either and projects which had lingered on the needles and which weren't ever going to be finished.

So the empty bags got put away, the cross stitch projects got moved to where I keep the cross stitch, the projects that weren't ever going to be finished got pulled out and the wool was either kept to be used or put into one of the other piles. 

And when I had done all that the box looked like this

Several WiPs, some large and some small, and some wool including  a lot of small amounts for charity knitting, and some earmarked for other projects. And quite a  bit of spare space at the top!  I hope there will be a lot more spare space by the end of February. We'll see. 

Christmas Socks

 Well I wasn't going to bother this year, because I am a bit Christmas sock-ed out, but in the end all three of us had new socks for Christmas.

Mine have already featured here because I made them several months ago but kept them for Christmas; these ones 

And I talked here at the end of November about deciding to do the OH some socks in the West Yorkshire Spinners Christmas colourway  - Nutcracker - and they turned out like this. My shawl in the same colour is nearing completion, another 16 rows and a very fierce block still to do. 

Son No 2 wasn't going to get any but then I got some wool in an advent parcel and decided that I would use that to make him some. In the event they weren't finished in time for Christmas Day but they weren't too late and he was happy enough to model them

Tardis coloured stripes! 

Shall We Finish Up Stockholm?

I think we'd better as we have just booked hotel, flights and opera tickets for our next visit there which is in March. Seems like a good idea to finish writing up this trip before we embark on another one. (I do know March is quite  a long way away, but we've been filling in the planner this morning and the year is staring to look busy). 

So, what have I not covered? The marzipan boat

This sails into Stockholm at the end of November and moors up in the major quay area of Strandvagen to sell Christmas marzipan to the good citizens of Stockholm. For those who may not know, marzipan is a huge traditional thing in most Scandinavian countries and often takes the form of a pig. I have no idea why. Oddly enough, for something that has been going on for 28 years or so, there seems to be widespread ignorance of the boat's existence. The receptionist in our hotel looked very blank when we said we were off to find it; he'd never heard of it. It was lovely and we bought stuff, on the downside we got Whammageddoned on there. Annoying as I didn't hear the song anywhere else all December!  

The traditional Swedish dinner or Julbord at the hotel. This was six courses and there were several timeslots. We chose the last one at 8.00pm  which was a mistake in retrospect as gannets had been at the buffet and also the staff were wanting to clear up when we were on about course 4. However there was certainly a huge variety of food and I did enjoy it. I even ate some herring, apple cured, and quite enjoyed it. If we did it again, which we won't because wild horses would not get me back to Stockholm in December again, we'd definitely do it earlier in the evening,  but I did take some pics. 

yes there is some herring in there, honest.

much much food 

and even more 

this was my dessert choice. There's a candied fruit jelly, some traditional rice pudding, a passionfruit flavoured tart, some chocolate covered almonds and I forget what the thing in the blue case was, but it must have been delicious because wall the dessert stuff was. 

No pictures from the opera naturally as it's not allowed, but we saw a very good performance of Rigoletto. As I said to someone, it was a shame the tenor took the whole of Act 1 to warm up and, unless he was taking his calls in character he wasn't nearly as good as he evidently thought he was. The Rigoletto was good; powerful and moving, but the star of the show was undoubtedly the Gilda. It's a role with a  lot of very high notes and not once did I worry she was going to miss one.  Or - even worse - shriek on them. 

There were a few other small things we did that wouldn't be of great general interest, but we did have  a lovely time. 

Beannachadh

 

When I was doing my Ph D I had a lot of help and encouragement from another scholar who had edited a complete collection of Hay's poetry. I always intended to give him a thank you gift as I had to George's friend and editor who had also given me a lot of help, not only with my thesis but also the fundraising and publicity for the Makar's Court stone. You can read all about that gift  here

I knew what I wanted for this one, but, having had a recommendation from a friend for a calligrapher and entered into some e-mail correspondence with her, she suddenly ghosted me ( not that I knew ghosting was even a thing at that point) Then we had covid and it all got put on  aback burner. Recently I had another attempt to find a calligrapher, this time with more success, and the piece was commissioned, made and delivered to me before we went south to Glasgow on our way to Stockholm. And while we were in Glasgow we managed to meet up with the recipient and hand it over. I think he liked it. 

I know the photo is a bit odd. But the lady in the shop where we bought the frame put it in for us  and then wrapped it up very thoroughly to protect it and I hadn't; the heart or the nerve to unwrap if to take the photo. And actually it is quite clear. 

Anyway the reason I'm blogging about it today is that it seems appropriate for the new year. Beannachadh is the Gaelic for blessing and the translation of this one is

May the King of the stars and the white sun 

Shield you from want and sickness

May he shield you from tempest and turmoil

and may you have peace where you are for ever

That seems a good place to start 2024.