The Brochure Came

 

Lots of beautiful photographs and no prices. While I appreciate they take a 'bespoke tailoring' approach to their holidays (something I hadn't realised when I sent off for the brochure)  there's something intrinsically off putting about a brochure which doesn't give even guide prices so we won't be using them. I expect we'll do what we did when we went to Madeira and book through British Airways; not the cheapest, although I'm sure cheaper than these people!, but reliable, and we earn Avios points or whatever they're calling them this week on the total package not just the flights. Sometime in September is the goal. I have picked up a DK Top 10 Guide to Florence and Tuscany, 2013 edition, which was the nearest our library has to an up to date guide to Florence to get some ideas;  I'll read it,  make notes and then top up the info nearer the time with up to date stuff from the Internet. 

Did I mention recently how nice the weather had turned? If not here, I said it elsewhere and immediately jinxed it. Yesterday we even had hailstones! 

Quick Update

I 'passed' the retake of my Field of Vision test when I took it last week.  My mouth has stopped hurting although I am still using some revolting tasting mouthwash to ensure the almost-but-not-quite healed chasm in my gum doesn't get infected. And, we have sold the house again, we think.

After our recent experience we are not taking anything for granted but the current buyers seem deadly serious; they are in the process of completing the sale of  their own place down in England and don't need a mortgage and the people we're buying from seem OK (for now) about staying on side while our purchasers sale grinds through the slow mill that is the English house selling system. 

As a result I am rather more perky than I have been for many many weeks and even managed to send off for a City break brochure from a firm specialising in trips to Italy. I am determined that, even if we can't book anything yet, this is the year I see Florence. 

I note said brochure has yet to arrive; the Post Office in its wisdom recently started routing post for the Northern Isles through Glasgow rather than Inverness as they had previously done. This seems to have speeded up post going south, and seriously slowed the things coming north. The Post Office deny this slowing  down with great vehemence, which would be more convincing if the word 'Horizon' wasn't hovering in the air every time they make an official statement. 

Crafty Bits and Bobs Part 2

I have a lot of paper crafting supplies. This dates largely from the days when I visited my sister in America when she lived there for a time, where the choice was huge and cheap, and I was determines to do a lot of scrapbooking and card making. I have done a fair bit of cardmaking in my time but not in recent years so obviously the Go Through extended to my big paper crafting cupboard. And sets of drawers. I looked out lots of stuff I could give away live without and invited local people to come and take their pick. The take up was dismal. I thought people who ran local groups might be glad of free stuff but only the brownie woman turned up. I took back into stock some items  that I'd been in two minds about parting with, packed the rest up in cardboard boxes and off it went to a charity shop. 

Sometime last week, when I wasn't feeling up to dong much I was desultorily watching a few YouTube videos from knitters and one of them was showing off a hand made card she had received  with a wool order. She was in raptures over it, despite the fact that it was basically a big white square with a sticker of crocuses in the middle. I'm not saying it wasn't lovely, because it was, it was really nice, but it was also the epitome of simple. 

I've got stickers I thought; also I am more aware now of the large numbers of blank cards I have, I thought,  I cold bring the two together and make some notelets I thought.  So I did. 

Card, stickers, sticky ribbon and I even ventured a bit of rubber stamping on one of them. Then I let it get a teensy tinsy bit more complex

by mounting a sticker on a piece of card and rounding off the corners. 

They are not going to set the world alight but I enjoyed making them (using up stuff - yay!)  and I'll enjoy using them and I was pleased with how they turned out. 

Simples! but Effectives! 

Some Crafty Bits and Bobs Part 1

 Just to get the bad news out of the way first, not only have we lost our sale but it looks as though, as a consequence, we may lose our purchase as well. We might be able to save it if we get some new buyers for ours quickly, so fingers crossed, more in hope than expectation. 

Also my mouth continues to be painful after last weeks major extraction, but it is less painful than it was so we are thankful for small mercies. When we remember how. 

Anyway slightly more cheerfully. One of the places that got a Go Through was one of my built in storage boxes in the sunroom that had a lot of miscellaneous cross stitch stuff in it. It was about 5/6 full and now that it has had the 'going through' treatment there is  a single layer along the bottom plus a couple of shoeboxes, which is a very pleasing result. If I'd  known what a drastic difference it would make I would have taken photos. 

While I was clearing this out I came across various bits of stitching which had been finished but needed something done with them; obviously in the past I had considered it enough to do the stitching and then move onto the next shiny stitching thing rather than cope with the boring bit of sticking it in a frame or a card or whatever. Possibly I am older and wiser now. Whether that's true or not I took the poor neglected bits and pieces and finished them off.

There were some cards

and the good thing is I have actually used two of these already, including the one with the beaded cherries which I see I have photographed upside down! 

There was a mini sampler which I put into a frame that I found in a box of 'mounting things'. I'm not showing anyone the back! which is a total mess, but it looks fine from the front.

  

and there was this picture which also got put into a frame from the box. This was a kit given to me by a friend decades ago and I think it's Ann Hathaway's Cottage although it's so long ago I don't really remember. 

Part 2 tomorrow - probably. 

Consolatory Mail.

I am sorry to report that things have not been going wonderfully well since my last post, which is probably why I haven't been here for so long to be honest. 

Our house sale fell through. Our putative buyers, who had told us since January that they had their finance in place, but seemed increasingly reluctant to produce it, were finally forced to admit last week that they did not have any of it locked in and there was no money currently available, at which point we put the house back on the market together with prayers for a quick sale to someone with cash in hand so that we do not lose the house we want to buy.   I am not going to pretend that this was anything but A Blow.

In other news the thing that sent me to the GP continues to cause me some anxiety. My eye test was fine except for the Field of Vision test which I 'failed' twice. I know you don't fail it like you fail a school exam, but I have never had any problems with it before and this time there were gaps. The upshot is that I have to go back next week to retake it. I shall insist that they either lower the machine or heighten my chair because I don't think the fact that I was huddled over to see the screen like some ancient shrinking witch helped at all, and also I won't be suffering the after effects of just having the bright lights of a retinal scan in my eyes, so fingers crossed for a clean bill of health on that one.  I went yesterday for my double tooth extraction and it was brutal. It didn't help that he had to remove some infected bone as well as a wisdom tooth and the one next to it, which prolonged the procedure almost beyond endurance. Shock and pain were the major elements of the rest of the day and today I have done very little other than knit a lot of a sock and transfer yesterdays washing to the tumble dryer. 

There was a small shaft of light when we got back from the dentists in the shape of my yarn from the Art Gallery club from  Caroline at Yarn Unique. I was expecting another print like we had last month; I was already wondering what I would do with 12 A4 paper art prints but in fact this month we didn't get one.  We got some lovely Klimt postcards and some bookmarks instead. And of course the yarn. As it was Klimt I had opted for the sparkle version, since I was fairly sure the yarn would be gold coloured. And here it all is.

I have used up last months Degas yarn on a pair of socks for me and I ordered next months which is based on Van Gogh's Starry Starry Night which I am planning to make into a pair of socks for the OH. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the current one - is there a pattern lovely enough I ask myself? but it will be either fingerless mitts or a scarf/shawl thing to go round my neck. 

Also on the upside I have finished going through stuff, and the library has really benefitted from a lot of new to them books; we have another couple of handfuls to take in over the next few days as and when we go into town. I daresay a few more things will get weeded out when we do the Actual Pack but meanwhile the sorting is done. Much to my relief. 

February Wool Stats and Other Things

 I was going to head this up, That was A WEEK, but I suspect all weeks for the foreseeable future will be WEEKS, so I'll save that heading in case I need it even more in the next couple of months. Meanwhile I feel like I'm subjecting myself to a drawn out human MOT really. Last week I went to the dentists ( back next week for a double extraction, oh joy!) and the doctors ( ENT referral, more joy ) and this week it's the optician's tomorrow and the hairdresser on Thursday. I think I can safely say that the only one of these things that has any chance of making me happy is the hairdresser. 

In addition to the appointments I have been going through more stuff. I am happy to say that the end appears to be in sight as the only things left to go through before we start the official packing are the large kitchen drawers, which are the OH's domain,  and what I call my Ph D bookcase. Albeit the bookcase is 7 fairly densely packed shelves but I did two of them this morning so progress. 

And so to the wool and February's projects. Unlike January there was some wool in, 220g to be exact which is 220g worse than nil but equally not a huge amount. Wool out was 989g; half of this was a donation - see below and the rest was either swapping for books or used up. 

The project photos look a bit meagre 

socks made from one of the weeks in the weekly advent from Skein and the Stitch, in hte colourway Curiouser and Curiouser

and these 

all those squares plus the 12" ones I made at the end of last year went off to Woolly Hugs last week along with the remains of the wool I had bought to make them ( see comment re donation above). Last autumn I said to a friend that I'd like a year of dong nothing but the mindless knitting and crocheting of blanket squares and she (rightly) predicted I'd be bored in a month. I did however get to learn how to change colour part way through a granny square and how to crochet solid ones so that's two new skills, as well as some much needed blanket squares and a welcome donation to a good cause. And a lesson  reinforced. There's only so much non-challenging knitting I can cope with.  

I've been adding bits to a couple of long term projects as well, and also, having 'gone through' my cross stitch supplies I have picked up an old stitching WiP too. So I'm not beating myself up over the lack of completed things (much) because I just don't have the time to do everything. But I've marked my report card 'Must Do Better' for March! 

Reading Challenge Catch Up

 

I'm very behind with recording my reading, as my last post on the topic took me up to book 9 and I've just finished number 18. So there won't be any very full reviews, more like a list. 

10 and 11 were two crime thrillers that I swapped out some wool for. The Winter Killer by Alex Pine and The Santa Killer by Ross Greenwood. Both well crafted, with good plots. The Pine is perhaps a bit overwritten, striving too hard to 'do good writing' and so comes across as a bit stiff, the Greenwood has some wit and humour about it. I wouldn't look for any of Pine's other books, but I'd definitely be up for reading more Greenwood. 

The next one was dire. Voyage of the Damned by Frances White. It was the Waterstone's fantasy/Sci-Fi book of the month for January and I'm not buying those this year but I go this because I had seen it very well reviewed elsewhere. It's a Young Adult novel,  which are often just grown up books which publishers think would be hard to flog to adults because of their setting or subject matter, but this was very very very much a YA book. It was an interesting crime book premise, 12 people on a ship who are murdered one by one, in an otherworld setting. The writing was not good but I could see why it had been published because the author has gone out of her way to foreground every fancy and 'correct' current trend. The protagonist is Fat. Check. He is gay. Check. Although he is white his lover is not. Check. One of the major characters uses a wheelchair. Check. One of the other characters turns out to be trans. Check. Another one insists on using they/their pronouns. Check. Let me be clear, I have nothing against inclusiveness and diversity in books. I think it's a good thing. A healthy thing. Generally to be applauded. But not when it's obvious that the author has a diversity checklist and doesn't stop until she's ticked all the boxes, greatly to the detriment of the story. 

Next up was Agatha Christie's  Cat Among the Pigeons which I listened to on Audible to help me sleep. I've read it several times before, I know the plot, for a book with several murders it's quite soothing, it did the job. 

Glass Houses by Louise Penny I read for Saturday Slaughters. I must have  mentioned here before that I am not a fan of Louise Penny, but I am very much in the minority here as she sells books by the million. I don't like her lead detective who I think a smug snob, I don't like the community where she sets much of her work because it's weird and most of the characters who live there are crazy and/or unpleasant. Her plotting is usually quite tight but in this instance she built up to a climax that was overblown and worst of all she has pages and pages of clauses masquerading as sentences. I've got nothing against that used sparingly. As a continuous narrative technique it's just annoying.  

15 was a repeat read of Godkiller which I read and enthused about last year about this time. While we were south I picked up the sequel, Sunbringer, which I'm reading at the moment but re-read Godkiller to remind myself of all the details I knew I would have forgotten and which would be good to have in mind while reading the next one in the series. 

Now we get to We Solve Murders (see photo above) by Richard Osman. I didn't know whether I would like this so hadn't bothered to seek it out at the library or on Audible but again swapped it for wool in a ravelry group. I'm so glad I did. It's light and  funny, a fast paced easy read with some great characters (some slightly exaggerated for comic effect ), an interesting plot and a twist which I did see coming but not long before it happened. Definitely recommended.

17 was City of Destruction, the latest addition to Vaseem Khan's Malabar House series set in post Independence India. I'm a fan of these; the stories are intriguing, the writing is atmospheric, there's a lot of Indian history lightly sketched in and Persis, the central character is very believable. 

And finally for now, 18 was the Agatha Christie Book of the Month. The career highlighted was Author and the book was The Thirteen Problems, a set of short stories featuring Miss Marple. I'd only come across one of these before , so 12 were new to me. If you've read a lot of Agatha Christie then most of the solutions will present themselves fairly easily but they're still fun; barring some of the language and attitudes which reflect those of Christie's time and class.