Well, they're not sunflowers

 

but they were given to me when I went to make a donation to a collection for Ukraine. There's a huge effort locally to raise money and fill a truck with needed stuff and as part of that my friend R arranged a collection of basic toiletries at the weekend. A local business donated small bags and people donated other stuff so that she ended up with 100 bags each containing a face cloth a bar of soap a toothbrush a tube of toothpaste and one other thing, shampoo, or  deodorant, or a disposable razor for men. A fantastic effort and she ended up with 100 bags plus extras of soe thngs thta wll g to the general collection. 

And everyone who dropped in a donation got a little bunch of daffs and catkins tied with blue and yellow ribbon which I thought was lovely. 

I have sent off some hats and some children's cardigans that I had already made and I am currently churning out more hats, since they have been specifically requested. Luckily they are quick to knit and  I enjoy doing them and they distract me from the worst bits of Gregg Wallace - yes, Masterchef is back and Greg Wallace is still in it. and he is still pulling stupid faces and calling all the male contestants 'Mate'. 

So, yesterday was a very odd day ....

in the morning I made these

Not very fancy but I liked them, It's ages since I did any paper crafting so I'm edging back in with simple stuff. 

I began to feel rather unwell at lunchtime and when a friend rang I had trouble concentrating on what she was saying (although I subsequently discovered, to my relief,  she hadn't been able to tell, so perhaps I should get an Oscar. An hour later, I was in terrible pain, half a hour after that I was talking to the doctor and then I was in the car on my way to A and E.

Not quite how I would have wanted the day to pan out. 

It turned out my gallstones had decided to make their presence felt which was unkind of them. I was sent home after about an hour having been given some pain relief and ordered to keep taking the tablets for four days. Plus there will be an appointment for a scan and another meeting with the surgeon. Not looking forward to either of those things and rather peeved that this has come at the same time as my vision problems and when we were planning to do lots of lovely things which may have to be postponed or cancelled while I get sorted out. 

Well as a friend said on Saturday, old age doesn't come alone. 

Baking Subscription March

 

For once I did this almost as soon as the box arrived. These are Chocolate Brownie Cakes and they were delicious. I suspect they were not quite as 'Brownie' as intended, they did end up looking and tasting like quite posh chocolate fairy cakes, but who cares if they taste good? 

I made them, made the ganache and filled them, then went off to the shower asking the OH to finish them off by putting the ganache and sprinkles on the top. Why he piped the ganache rather than just using my trusty palette knife I don;t know. The effect was slightly unfortunate, but it didn't stop us eating and enjoying them very much. 

And the bonus is left over ganache in the freezer for the next time I make a cake and can't be bothered to make any butter cream. 

Well, there's a thing ....

 I was having a comfortable warm doze this morning when I became aware of the OH wittering on about sheep. I didn't get excited. There are lots of sheep on Orkney. Then he said something about 'our drive' and 'eating the grass' so I reluctantly dragged my sorry carcase out of bed and peeped out of the window. To be met with this

Not an everyday occurrence. They stayed about twenty minutes and the trotted off back down the drive. Goodness knows where they are now.

We are public spirited and a message was posted to the local FB group to say they had visited, so that any local Little Bo-Peep could know where they were/had been. No response so far, but I daresay they will find their way home in due course. 

Houston, We Have A Problem

 I haven't blogged for a bit. There's a reason, which is that I am finding it increasingly difficult to read and write. An emergency appointment at the optometrist last week resulted in less than happy news.  (I say emergency, what I mean is, you have to justify bang seen asap instead of joining the hapless queue of people who flood the phone line on a Monday morning hoping to be given a slot four weeks hence for  a routine eye test.)

Anyway, my one good eye seems t have decided to give up on being a good eye and become a bad eye instead. There are several things going on with it, one of which something can be done about easily, one which something can be done about with a minor risk, and one which may or may not  be improvable with surgery. 

The easy thing has been done - a new prescription lens which was fitted this morning. For the rest I have been referred to the Ophthalmology clinic = there's one here every month when the eye specialists come up from Inverness. Optician was hopeful I would be seem when they come this month which would be good as I'm not the best at living in limbo. But who knows.

I've managed to find the tab that lets me make the font bigger on here which makes it easier, so I shan't be giving up on blogging yet. It may be shorter entries and less often though, we'll have to see. The good news for the OH of course is that there is unlikely to be any 'banging on about books' for a while since it really is hard to read for longer than about 20 minutes at a time. Thank goodness for Audible.

In slightly happier news I have had to move my Books to Read poster to another room because I needed the space on the wall in  my study for a year planner since we have things to do and places to go.  

Baking Subscription February

You know how sometimes you're watching a property program and the presenter opens a door and you look at a room and go 'What were they on?'

This was exactly my reaction when i opened the February baking box and discovered that this month's bake was Carrot Cake Biscotti. 

I'll repeat that for those who can't quite believe it. Carrot Cake Biscotti. Bizarre or what? 

Anyway I baked them yesterday. Here's a photo. Chocolate drizzling courtesy of the OH.

I think it is safe to say I won't be making them again. 

Here's Another Thing I Like to Buy ...

 Handbags. Yoshi ones anyway. 

This is the latest

Yup it's the Jane Austen thing again. The combination of JA and a Yoshi bag has proved difficult to resist, although I have resisted for quite  a long time. 

On our way back from Glasgow we stopped, as is our wont, at the Grandtully shop of the Highland Chocolatier. One of the things you can always find in their amazingly good gift shop is a selection of Yoshi bags,  and this time they had this one so I bought it. I tell myself that this is the last - and maybe it is.

Nice though, isn't it?

Pretty, pretty!

 I was watching The Apprentice' last night - I know, such are the depths to which I  have fallen, but I look on it as unscripted comedy and that gets me through, and one of the contestants said 'Women love buying bedlinen'. I could sound off about the sexism inherent in this statement were it not for the fact that I know quite a lot of women, myself included, who actually do love it.  

When we decorated our bedroom which was ages ago now we chose  a very deep purple for a feature wall and I don't think I realised how difficult it would be to get bedlinen to 'go with it', but so it has proved. Along with the comparative  lack of shops in Orkney this has meant that whenever we go away I tend to be dawn into places that sell bedlinen, and if I find anything that looks suitable (a rare occurrence) I have tended to scoop it up. 

I haven't been able to indulge myself this way for quite  a long time now thanks to Covid, but obviously we are travelling a bit more now and we spotted something we both liked and was an appropriate colour on our latest trip to the Central Belt. It's very pretty, well I think so and I took a photo while it was still pristine. 

Birthday Knitting - It Hasn't All Been About the Socks

 When my sister saw the post about my little knitted gnome Vigdis, she let slip she thought I might have been making it/another one for her. I wasn't; not having had any idea that she was particularly fond of gnomes. Father Christmas - yes; Snowmen - yes, Gnomes - ah,not so much. However having learned that they were the sort of thing she likes I promised her one for her birthday So here it is

There wa also a project I came to name 'A Series of Unfortunate Events. I saw some yarn on the Giddy Yarns website; it was a leftover from her Halloween box. It looked to be a nicely variegated blue, my sister's favourite colour, so I ordered it, thinking I would make her, well yes, a pair of socks. 

Sadly when it came it was as much green as blue. Even more sadly it wasn't 4 ply but DK. Even more sadly than that there wasn't enough of it to make a thicker pair of socks than normal. All was not lost though, I thought. I knew she wore fingerless mitts so I looked out a lovely pattern I had used with Giddy Yarns DK before which I'd made up for myself and which I loved. So I knitted a pair of those. Sadly the Halloween yarn was a bit too dark to show up the pattern very well. Welcome to H's 'blue birthday socks - not'.

Luckily I had bought her something else too but I've yet to work out how to package that up for posting. 

And the gnome is fun

And several days later here I am editing out the typos from the above.  My sight seems to be deteriorating by the day.