2026 Finshed Projects No. 4

 And yes, this is it, this is the big one. 

It's the Debbie Abrahams Mystery Blanket from 2019.

I am indebted to a friend at Knit Group who pointed out to me that if I finished it it would make a massive contribution to my stash reduction statistics. I don't know why this had not occurred to me myself, but it hadn't. But as it was undeniably true, and as I felt I could  now face rectifying the  mistake that had had me dropping it in the first place, I picked it up towards the end of November and finally finished it yesterday. And yes, the stats for February,  unless I go unexpectedly mental will look very healthy. 

Have to be honest I'm not loving it.  Probably because I 'm not totally on board with the palette, and also of course because I can still see all the small imperfections in it which I will forget about as time goes on. And on the plus side it's very warm! 

2026 Finished Project No. 3

 No, it's not that one. Although that one is almost there. Meanwhile. I needed a small and mindless project  to take to knit group or for when I was watching TV or was feeling too tired for The Big One. So, voila!

New socks for the OH knitted with the wool he chose at East Neuk Knits. So that skein at least didn't hang around for too long. 

Nutcracker in Havana

 

We went to see this at the Festival Theatre in Edinburgh on Wednesday. We had a chance to see a filmcast of the ROH one before Christmas but we decided against it, I think on the grounds that we were a bit 'Nutcrackered Out'. Odd for me tbh  but that's how I felt and we went to see the Cinderella instead. 

However when I saw this advertised on a marketing e-mail from the Festival Theatre I thought it might be fun and a great antidote to February gloom, so after a bit of humming and haaaing I booked it. I should not have hummed and haaed for as long as I did (all of two days iirc)  because by the time I went to book it there were very few seats left. I suppose that's not really surprising as there were only four performances. Anyway I booked some upper circle seats which were about all that there was left and on Wednesday we got up quite early and got the train to Edinburgh. We wanted to visit a hobby/model shop which was recommended to us by the OH's brother when he was with us recently. A railway modeller's dream I should say and they had a few bits and pieces of doll's house furniture so I splashed out on a kitchen table and chairs for mine, and the OH looked longingly at a very small gauge train set which he didn't buy and which I have been trying to persuade him to purchase, or rather let me purchase  for him,  ever since. Then it was back to the centre of the city and the ballet. 

Can I just say that the seats we had were not what I would describe as Upper Circle? They were what, in any other theatre, would be described as Balcony seats, or even, for those theatres that have one, Upper Balcony,  with all that that entails, mainly climbing stairs for what seems like forever and emerging into a space that is not at all suitable for people with a tendency to vertigo i.e. me. Apparently developing vertigo  is quite common in post menopausal women. Who knew? Well not me until recently. Vertigo, constantly itchy skin and thinning hair, what joy.  But I digress. 

I was not a particularly happy bunny by the time we had mountaineered our way to our seats and so was inclined to not enjoy Act 1 of the ballet which was not nearly as colourful or energetic or generally 'Cuban' as I had anticipate to be honest. And I was inclined to think the Cuban bits gimmicky and cliche'd. However my equilibrium was somewhat restored by the interval and I enjoyed Act 2 very much. Perhaps it was the unavailing attempt of the man in the seat next to us to purchase an interval ice cream that perked me up: he found a seller, queued up and then discovered that they only took card payments and he only had cash on him. I shouldn't have let that cheer me up, goodness knows I had the same experience at the TheatrerRoyal once when I discovered you could no loner pay for programs by cash and therefore didn't bother to get one. A practice we have continued ever since when we are familiar with the opera we are about to see.  I did however buy a souvenir program for Nutcracker in Havana since it was the Carlos Acosta company  and so  a Special Occasion. I did have to think twice though as it was £10 which struck me as ludicrous. At least it did until I heard from a friend who had been to see the Anniversary Tour of Dead Ringers recently and who told me programs there were twice that much! 

The one good thing about our seats was that the balcony has such a steep rake that the sight lines are excellent. I couldn't take pictures during the performance naturally but I did get a few at the curtain call; this is the best one 

The light is always rubbish for these things. 

We are due back at the Festival Theatre shortly for A Christmas Carol Goes Wrong and I was filled with foreboding lest we had seats once more in the misnamed Upper Circle. Having checked I was relieved to find that we are actually in the stalls for that - this still means one flight of stairs for some reason but I can manage that! 

January Reading Round Up

So, what did I read in January? I ' finished ' seven books - the reason for the  ' ' will become apparent.

I continue to read any J D Kirk that comes my way via my two libraries and I think a 99p Kindle Daily deal this month too. This means I am not reading them in order which is not ideal but I'm not that bothered. I should however try not to read too many of them all at once or I shall O/D and get sick of them. That's easier said than done though when you're prowling the library shelves and find one you haven't already read. So this month I read A Litter of Bones, which is actually Book 1, and shows it, the first in a series can sometimes be a bit below par as the author finds their feet,   and Come Hell or High Water which is somewhat further through. 

I have already mentioned/put out a warning on the book club choice of The Malt Whiskey Murders. Nuff said, as per N Molesworth. 

My two 'fall asleep to' books this month were Elly Griffiths' The Last Remains and Mick Herron's Slough House. Slough House is a bad choice for night time drowsing as there are some very tense moments in it which, even though I have read the book several times, I still find very difficult to listen to. But not, you know, so difficult that I don't! Fall asleep books have to be ones I've listened to before so that I have some way of finding the point at which I fell asleep the previous night and picking up from there. I usually put the timer on to 15 or 30 minutes, but that's less help than you might think! 

After that we have The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennet. I'd seen this favourably reviewed by crime and fantasy reviewers since it is a crime novel set in an imagined world. I didn't enjoy it held as much as I thought I would. The murder mystery was fine as far as it went although  I thought the author cheated a bit by making the central murders and their solution reliant on the particular oddities of his world. It's  tricky to explain, but it seemed to me, and I may be wrong, that he made some things up as he went along, rather than having thought out the basic parameters of the way his world differed from the one we live in, just to make his life easier. A sort of 'oh if I say this is a thing, even if it's on page 201 and not previously mentioned then x can do y and therefore discover z'. I didn't take to either of the two main protagonists, and it seemed a novel driven almost entirely by the mechanics of (admittedly slick) plot,  and not development, or even display of character. That said, it's not a bad book, goodness knows I have encountered much worse, and if you like crime fiction or imagined worlds, it's probably worth a look. 

Finally we have I Who Have Never Known Men by Josephine Harpman and which was recommended to me by a friend as 'thought provoking'. This one was the cause of the ' ' above, because I have to confess I didn't listen to it all. I got about 2/3rds of the way through, some of that at 1.5 speed to make it go quicker. I then skipped to the last 20 minutes. And that was  a mistake because in a novel that was outstandingly bleak the final few pages were the bleakest of all. I know that the author probably wanted to say interesting things about what makes life meaningful and how communities work and the value of knowing things, but when you boil it down, she didn't. If you are any more curious about it, I refer you to the Amazon plot precis and then in particular to  the 1-3 star reviews. The reviews will a least raise a smile, which is more than the book did. 

Wool Stats for January

So, wool in 200g, wool out 316g net decrease for the month is 116g 

This is not the flying start I have had in the last two Januarys but I'm not too downhearted about that. The main reason for my equanimity is that I am still ploughing through this large project that I have mentioned before and, just as in December I failed to finish it in January. But, it is very close to being done now; I am confident it will be complete by the end of the coming week. And then it will go on the bathroom scales and I will be a very happy bunny. Not just for the weight reduction but also being able  to use the finished product which is lovely. 

The other reason is that I have bought very little and resisted the temptation to sign up for various yarn clubs, new yarns, treat boxes etc; e-mail notifications for which have been filling my in-box all month. This augurs well for very little wool coming into stash over the year. I bought the yarn for the Sophie Scarf which I have already shown here and the other 100g was this 

obviously destined to be a pair of socks for the OH. I won't go into all the details of how and why but it was a once only chance so I snagged it. 

Only two finished projects this month, which is hardly surprising given the amount of time I have spent on the Big One. They were the Sophie Scarf, and the baby blanket for my friend's daughter and I've already show them off in blog posts so won't  repost those. 

I am currently going through my knitting stash identifying, kits, wips, things I have wool and pattern for so that I know where they all are as I try to make my way through as many of them as possible over the coming eleven months.  I feel spreadsheets coming on whihc is good; I do love a good spreadsheet! 

 

Celtic Connections

 

Given that we lived in Orkney for 20 years without, despite our best intentions, ever once getting around to going to the Orkney Folk Festival I suppose it's not surprising that we had never thought about going to Celtic Connections. the huge celebration of folk music held in Glasgow every January.  

We went this year though, courtesy of the OH's brother who bought us tickets for one of the concerts as his present for the OH's Big Birthday. It was on Wednesday evening so that was  a busy day; picking up brother from the  station, showing him the new house, giving him lunch and then taking him over to Glasgow where he was spending the next few nights at the flat so that he could explore Glasgow a bit. 

The concert (gig?) was in the Royal Concert Hall in Glasgow where we have never been before. We were impressed, it's a bit Tardis like given that it's much bigger on the inside than you would expect from the outside. My only grumble would be the number of stairs - of which more anon. 

We saw three bands

Staran

Imar

and Rura 

I say this as though I knew all about them; the truth is I hadn't heard of any of them before we got the tickets. After my experiences last autumn I am now very wary of reviewing any live performances except in the most glowing of terms, lest I be to taken to task by a marketing or press officer. In those circumstances it is a good thing that I enjoyed the whole evening immensely.

I understand that Rura are 'one of the most sought after bands on the current Scottish folk scene' which I can totally believe as they were fabulous. Of the other two I preferred Staran, mainly because they had a vocalist (who was very good). The OH's brother vastly preferred Imar but he is biased as two of the players come from the Isle of Man, a place he loves and where he used to work many years ago.

I think it's probably safe to say that that won't be our last visit to Celtic Connections. 

We should have been going to a totally different concert at Glasgow Uni yesterday lunchtime but we had to call it off as I could hardly walk. The many many many stairs at the Concert Hall somehow aggravated that knee problem from the accident in Finland back in 2024 and not only that but my left hip came out in sympathy overnight so it became obvious quite quickly that I wasn't going anywhere. I was really disappointed. 

All things considered January wasn't as empty a month as I had feared it would be. February is looking busy but not too busy, and, as long as plans don't get upset by the weather, it should be good.

A biscuit baking disaster

 

This week I tried my hand at Anzac biscuits and do not be fooled by the photograph, they were a disaster. These are the only reasonable looking ones I could salvage to take a picture of. 

Don't get me wrong they taste fine. But apart from these few, they look a mess. They spread too far and too thinly and mostly all ran together into an amorphous blob. Very discouraging. 

I will however not allow myself to be discouraged. Check in next week to see what biscuit recipe I can massacre as January draws to a close. We might even have managed to finish eating the Would-Be Anzacs by then; they will go nicely with ice cream. If I'd only put in some ginger I could have pretended they were brandy snaps....

I think the problem was that the oven was too hot. It's difficult to set with any accuracy; I may have to look out the oven  thermometer. And new ovens are definitely on the agenda although not for a while as they will be expensive.