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.