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. 

Pootling about

It's autumn and we've slowed down a bit. That said Son No 2 is coming over for the weekend as it's his birthday, and hot on his heels will be my sister visiting for  a few days. And there are a couple of other things on the calendar for November too. But it's not action packed like the summer was. 

Her's a bit of a catch up on some gentle days since we got back from Glasgow. 

We went for another walk in our local woodland, choosing a different path and coming across part of the Devon river which was much fuller and free flowing than we have seen it previously.

We went up to the independent book shop in Dollar one afternoon. We didn't buy any books but treated ourselves to coffee and cake.

mines the plain lemon drizzle at the front. Just so you know.

I did a jigsaw puzzle 

which, along with two others and a few bits and pieces we took to the charity shop for the local cat shelter. We also visited the cat shelter, donated some money and some food, and said we were pleased to help but not in the market for a cat. I think possibly we are in the market for a cat to be honest but possibly not until after Christmas. And it will need to be The Right Cat.

And I had some Happy Mail

I got 20% off because they are preparing to publish Knitted Kalevala III in the not too distant future. I already have Volume I but I think overall this one is better i.e. there are  more patterns in there that I wold like to knit.

I baked a cake. This was good of me as I do not like the ovens in our new kitchen and only the reflection that if I don't bake I will never get used to them gets me anywhere near my baking tins these days. 

So there you go. Quietly domestic days.