Weather Woes

We're off to Madeira on Friday which is lovely and which we're both looking forward to. Well, we're looking forward to being there; getting there not so much. Getting there involves an evening flight from Glasgow to Heathrow on Thursday, and a very early flight from Heathrow to Funchal on Friday. Because it's January we booked the early morning ferry on Tuesday, because that gave us several bites at the cherry if the weather meant cancelled ferries. Three ferries a day, two days, we thought we had it covered. 

Except that the winds are high and forecast to get even higher by mid-week and several ferries have already been cancelled and who knows what is gong to happen. The winds are due to drop tomorrow afternoon and we have therefore brought forward our ferry booking to tomorrow evening, although the word is that they will probably combine the afternoon and evening sailings so who knows what time it will go, assuming it does.  Coming on top of the problems we have had sorting out the booking in the first place, we will definitely need to do some major relaxing once we get there. I'm not even going to tempt fate by saying 'if'. 

I've wanted to go to Madera for a long time so assuming all goes well then I will have ticked off a third place on my bucket list in sometime less than nine months, which isn't bad going since I made my bucket list about thirty years ago and most of the places on there have languished unvisited ever since. Possibly it needs a bit of revision; and possibly I need to get my head down and get some more ticked off before I am tool old to travel.  

Anyway we're due back in Orkney, weather permitting on 10th of Feb., so no blogging before then I  suspect, but on the upside some pretty pictures when we get back hopefully. 

Domestic Pottering

I had a very lovely day on Wednesday, pottering about doing things that I enjoy. Bar the little bit of housework that I had on my schedule. And the laundry - but I don't mind doing that. It's not as though I'm scrubbing sheets in a sink, then putting them through a mangle. It's hardly an effort to put things in a machine and then press a couple of buttons. 

First off we went for a, very cold, walk. We've been suffering from some travel arrangement stress recently and this walk helped, although not as much as having the situation resolved last night , after far too long, did! 

It's a walk we do relatively often and some readers may recognise the otter statue on the gatepost as he has featured here before. His bow tie has been replaced with a little woolen scarf- an excellent idea given how cold the weather is just now. 

Once we got back I worked on a jigsaw puzzle; not the one  I  had in the recent swap parcel, but one which my sister lent me a while ago. It's a challenge. 

then I made some cake

Last week  bought a new craft storage 'thing'. I had a wicker hamper which I  have been keeping my knitting related accessories in for many years now. The thing was the cats thought it was a weirdly shaped scratching post and treated it accordingly. So when a rather nice lttle box caught y eye a wee while ag nour ocal craft supplies shop I thought  mght get it as a replacetn. 

When I enquired I discovered it was only £12.99, so I splashed out and  treated myself. 

And on Wednesday afternoon I had a good sort out of the hamper contents and those that survived the, not very severe, cull, got transferred to the box. 

And in the evening I did some cross stitch, alas no picture, and did some knitting. My advent project grew and so did a pair of socks. 

It was a really good and productive day in a gentle sort of way.  I'd hoped yesterday would be the same, but having forgotten to set the alarm on my Lumie clock, the one that simulates sunrise and wakes me up feeling refreshed rather than groggy, I overslept and woke up feeling - well, less than alert. Spent most of the day trying catch up with myself, although I never seemed quite to manage it. 

It Came!

 The OH is so happy. The new computer really did come today, despite having to be delivered to the back of beyond. Pictorial proof.

It came in one of the biggest cardboard boxes either of us have ever seen, and he spent a happy morning assembling it - it works! so that's a good thing, and he's spending a slightly less happy afternoon uploading software onto it. Unlike our previous ones this is a big white box with a transparent side and almost empty; that's going to take some getting used to. Meanwhile I struggle on with my laptop; there's nothing wrong with it really so I shouldn't say struggle, it's just that three of the keys on the keyboard are temperamental in the extreme, and account for some of the typos that slip through on here, since one of them is I. 

A Short and Chilly Walk

 

A couple of weeks back we went for a  walk in The Hope and saw about twenty seals pulled up on the beach (well, rocks) there. Naturally enough, because life and how it is, neither of us had our phone or a camera with us. 

We went back today because we really needed to a) get out of the house and get some fresh air into our lungs and b) we had forgotten to buy cream for the cats when we did the shopping on Friday so needed to rectify the situation - or so I was told. Left to myself I wouldn't give the cats cream, but there you go; apparently they tell the OH they 'neeeeeeeeeed it' and he stresses until we have replenished stocks. 

He took his phone and I took my camera, in case, and there were three or four seals on the main slip in the harbour, and quite  a lot more bobbing about in the water, so we managed to snaffle a pic this time 

It was blooming cold and we didn't stay out long but I felt better for making the effort. 

Now I'm off to tell the OH  I neeeeeeeeeeeeeeed a hot cup of coffee and we'll see if I get a response slar to that he gives the cats. 

He's quite excited today as he has a new computer on the way; it is supposedly going to be delivered tomorrow,  but we'll see. 

Books to Read Poster No 42

 I have been giving myself some time off the poster in favour of things Iactually wanted to read but I just finished listening to the next one. 

Here's the picture 

sorry it's out of focus but anyway it was George Orwell's 1984. 

I was reminded by the picture of one of the many odd things about my student trip to Moscow (overall a scarring experience it has to be said although not because of this.)All the rooms in the hotel where we stayed had radios and you couldn't turn them off. You could turn them down until they were largely inaudible but they didn't ever switch completely off. We were told it was because they doubled as listening devices, and I don't know to this day whether or not that was true. I couldn't imagine why anyone would want to listen in to a bunch of 19 year olds talking in a foreign language and mainly moaning about the (lack of edible) food. But who knows? 

It was also one of the most tedious books I've ever read. I said as much on Facebook and got various reactions including someone who told me kindly it was a novel of ideas (really?I'd never have known!) and someone else  who told me it was a satire on Soviet Russia which a) isn't quite true and b) I knew. Neither of these things excuse it from being dull. (Because after all Animal Farm was satire on the Soviets and it isn't dull. It's also mercifully much shorter.) Nor from  having a clunky plot, with a lot of inconsistences, not only at the end but actually all the way through.  Honestly why wasn't Winston  shot? Because that's what we were building up to, that's what the internal logic of the system in the book demands, but no, he's not.I suppose you could say that he might still be rearrested and shot one day, but then wouldn't it be better to show that than have him released and wandering about with an almost happy ending. I suspect Orwell just couldn't face 'killing' him.

I'm sure the book was a sensation when it was first published and probably quite scary and all that, and equally I might have been impressed with it if I'd read it in my teens. But I'm not in my teens now and I certainly wasn't impressed. 

Some Socks - and a Sneak Peek

So a couple of hitherto unrecorded not-quite-Christmas socks.

 I bought the wool for these at Glasgow School of Yarn, expecting to be able to knit them up for the OH before Christmas. As it turned out I didn't have much alone time to do them in secret, so I ended up wrapping up the ball of wool to put in his Christmas sock and promising to knit  it up between Christmas and New Year. Which I did. Colourway is Autumn Rainbow in Giddy Yarns self striping sock. The GY self striping is like gold dust as a) it's very popular and b) she doesn't do much of it - having watched several of her vlogs on You Tube and seen how much work goes into producing it I'm not at all surprised -  so I was delighted to grab a ball of this at GSoY. Far too bright for me but I knew he would love it. 

Secondly there's these. 

and they were for Son No  2. This was a Dr Who themed  scrappy pack from The Lonely Knitter and I waited until the recipient was here so that he could choose which of the mini skeins to use. In addition to the colours here there were three pink/grey ones, which subsequently became a hat for a friends new baby. The colours  used for the socks were; cuffs - The Tardis, legs- Exterminate, The Cybermen and The Man who Stops the Monsters, heels and toes - 'Oh Brilliant', feet - Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey and I Wear a Fez Now. I knitted them concurrently so that the length of the blocks all matched. 

I note in passing I am probably safe from Laura's scrappy club this year as it is Disney and Marvel themed alternately,  (although I suppose I might weaken when some of the Marvel ones come up). 

And here's the sneak peek 

This is part of the project I am using my Advent Yarn for. For a long time I have deplored the habit of people enthusing over anything as small and inconsequential as a stitch marker, but honestly - look at that mitten! How cute is that? And so in keeping with the theme of the calendar, and the time of year of course. I am cautiously pleased with how this project is going as it is totally unlike anything I have made before, and if it wasn't for adopting Positivity as my watch word for this year I might be quite anxious about how it will turn out. So far, however, so good. 

Second Christmas Jigsaw - Done

 and here's a picture

It is obviously from the same 'stable' as the previous one, although it was slightly less fun to do. But only slightly and it's another keeper. 

Next up will be one that I got recently in a swap parcel.

Meanwhile I note the weather here has been appalling and I am suffering from cabin fever. Apart from a routine  trip to the GP surgery on Monday to let the vampire loose on me (the OH's way of referring to a nurse taking blood samples) there s nothing gong on except a lot of knitting, a lot of British Airways induced stress (so stressful that I can't even bring myself to rant about it here because it would just depress me and do nasty things to my blood pressure) and a lot  of reading. I could of course indulge in a bit of spring cleaning, but that doesn't seem likely. Somewhere on the horzion is the annual 'go through of the wardrobe' and a little further over it a review of my yarn and card making stashes. Such are the excitements of island life. 

Egon Schiele

 

I was going to say that 'to my shame'  had never heard of Egon Schiele before we went to Venna but then I decided to cut myself some slack because I'm not an art historian and really, there is no reason in the world why I should have heard of Schiele, who isn't particularly famous unless you happen to be Austrian, or an expert in the Secession movement.

But as I said in my blog post on the art we saw in Vienna I found Schiele's work - I don't know quite how to describe it. Overwhelming would be overstating the case, gobsmacked is to be too flippant, and I think the nearest I can get s compelling. I dd think, looking at the pictures of his that we saw, that he was probably a very disturbed man, and I wanted to find out more about him - not necessarily because he was disturbed, but because his pictures really resonated with me. 

The picture above is the book I got out of the library here on Schiele. It's less of a book, and more of an illustrated essay but hey? I wasn't even sure the library would have anything on Schiele at all, so I'm grateful for what I got, which was  basically a brief potted biography with lots of pictures. 

I had to smile. Having said at the beginning that, while Schiele is mainly known for his pictures of nudes but that his work in landscape and portraiture is just as important, about five sixths of the book is devoted to a detailed description and many photographs of Schiele's nudes, specially his self portraits, and the landscape section is basically one page of text and four pictures. I suspect  that the author really only wanted to discuss the nudes and felt obliged to throw in a bit about the landscapes and (non-nude) portraits. Which is a shame because the landscapes that he has included are lovely and there is an amazing use of colour  them. In fact  you might be hard put to believe they were all produced by the same artist. 

So the book wasn't very informative about Schiele the man (Wikipedia was much more forthcoming!) but it did a good job filling in the artistic background of Vienna at the beginning of the 20th century. I'd still like to know more, but as Schiele died at only 28 perhaps there isn't a lot more to be said. He was obviously deeply obsessed with sex and death which led to some truly bizarre pictures, but he was equally obviously a very talented painter who could describe the complex structure of the human body with  very few strokes of his brush. Who knows what he might have achieved had he lived longer? As t is, I just have to enjoy - if enjoy is the word - the work he did do. 

Saturday Slaughters Resumes Tomorrow

Not having been at the previous meeting, because I was in Vienna, and the library not having many copies of this month's read, and then Christmas intervening when I had other things to think about, I wasn't able to get a physical coy of the book for tomorrow, but that was fine because it was on Kindle for 99p. I bought it at the beginning of the week and have been trying to find the time to finish it ever since. And I managed that yesterday afternoon. Would that I could have done the same with Hamnet, although I am almost through that too. 

The book was Absolution by Caro Ramsay. She was a new author for me and Absolution is the first in  series of police procedurals set in Glasgow. As the first in a series it necessarily needs to introduce a fair few series characters, which the reader is gong to get invested in, as well as deliver a good plot in its own right.  Ramsay succeeds with both, and I can see I shall read more of this series as time goes by. 

My only two gripes, and they are small enough and one is very personal, are 1) the set up scenes, which take place twenty years before the main action, are rather too long, which is something anyone might find irritating and 2) the phrase 'x thought there must have been inhabitants of liberated Belsen who looked better than y did that morning'. Long term readers will know I have a deep seated objection to crass or indeed lightweight use of the Holocaust in popular fiction and this one was particularly crass, referring as it did to a detective with a very bad hangover who had suffered minor injuries in a self inflicted (because drunk) car accident. 

Other than that I was very happy with it. This positivity thing is going to get unnerving soon. 

Serendipitous TV

We were out yesterday having lunch with some friends and talk turned to the TV with the usual grumble about how there s 'nothing to watch, despite a gazillion channels', and they said that basically what they were reduced to was periodically checking BBC4, Quest and Sky Arts 'just in case'. 

It was a cold day, and as we were without the car, because she was in the car hospital, we did a lot of walking about in town, and to-ing and fro-ing to bus stops and so on and when we got home I was cold to the bone. I spent much of the evening lying under six layers of blankets/throws ( ie three of them doubled) and muttering every so often that I 'wasn't really all that warm'. What I needed was some not very taxing and not very noisy tv to watch, and mindful of what K and R had said I checked to see what Sky Arts had on offer. I struck gold.

Currently showing, as I checked, was the second program in a series of four about authors from the so-called Golden Age of Children's Literature. It was 28 minutes in, but Sky offered me the option to restart it which I did. At the end of the episode it asked if I wanted the next one and I lay there happily watching episodes 3 and 4, then searched out episode 1 on catch up. 

Son No 2 watched some of it, but thought it was 'horribly sad', and it's true a lot of it leaned towards the melancholy. Several of these writers lost a child, some more than one, and really if it had taught me nothing else it would have reminded me to be grateful for how far medical sciences have come since the 1870s.  I thought I knew a lot about some of these authors, while being aware I was fairly ignorant about some others. I learned a lot, including the fact that some of the stuff I 'knew' was wrong, and was left with a desire to look out some biographies and find out more. I was also seized with a sudden impulse to find and buy a Beatrix Potter  Cross Stitch Alphabet Sampler but, perhaps happily, a perfunctory glance at the internet didn't throw up anything suitable. It's not as though I am short of cross stitch projects as it is. 

Biographies of the writers, with particular emphasis on those aspects of their lives that made it into their work, were interspersed with commentary from some leading lights; including Brain Sibley, who amongst other things wrote the BBC dramatisation of The Lord of the Rings, Peter Hunt, the 'godfather' of the  field of Children's Literature Studies, and Professor Dinah Birch. What they said was thoughtful enough to be interesting without being so academic it was off putting. Accessible but thought provoking. 

The series is called Wonderland, and if you have any interest at all in fiction for children from its beginnings to just before the Second World War then it is definitely worth seeking out and enjoying, if you have access to Sky and haven't already seen it. 

I note with some surprise that we are not yet half way through January and I have already waxed enthusiastic about a book and a tv program. I know I decided to take 'positivity' as my aspirational word for the year, but I hardly expected it to manifest so dramatically and so soon!

Vienna The Operas 3 - Meistersinger

 

That photograph shows my literal view when we went to Meistersinger. I could see only those tny bits at the extreme left and right of the stage. Things were no better for the OH,as the man in front of him had a head just as big and with ears that stuck out at 90 degrees. After the first two acts, with two hours of a non-visible opera to go we decided to cut our losses and leave. 

It wasn't just the size of the heads, although they were huge. The seats in the stalls at the Staatsoper are not offset but arranged directly behind one another, and there is no rake to speak of. So if you are sitting behind people with elaborate headgear or large heads then it's just tough luck. 

What we saw was nice but it's limiting not being able to see the centre of the stage were the action is taking place, especially in a piece as long as Meistersinger. The singing (certainly in the first half) was very good and as far as we could see it was an light bright production. Although the centre of the stage might have been plunged in gloom I suppose. 

Overall our experiences at the Staatsoper could best be described as underwhelmng I think - which is a shame since it was the major reason for the trip. As a 'world class opera house' Vienna fell woefully short. 

Book Report - Stone Blnd

 

What can  I tell you? It's a retake on the story of Medusa done in Haynes' inimitable style and it's as good as I expected. In fact it's better than I expected, partly because I didn't know how on earth she was going to make Medusa sympathetic, but in the end, in the words of Ryan George from You Tubes Pitch Meeting series*, 'it was easy, barely an inconvenience'. 

It's a sad story, with a bitter sweet ending. It also points up how old the practice of victim blaming is; Medusa is raped by Poseidon in Athena's temple, but it's Medusa who Athena punishes. Zeus happily rapes his way round what seems like half of Greece, but it's his victims  and their children that his wife Hera attempts to vent her wrath upon. There is however some light relief in the way the Hesperides run rings around a hapless Perseus, for whom you will have absolutely no sympathy by the time the book ends.

 

One of Haynes' writing 'tics' is to be very reductive with the gods of Greece, undercutting the heroic and noble way they have often been portrayed, by showing them as basically humans writ large. I did worry this might get old but she has pulled it off once again. The scene where Athene, the latest, youngest and therefore most insecure of the gods,  demands that Zeus give her 'a thing', because all the other  gods have a thing is very funny indeed, and explains why she is always seen with an owl. 

Recommended unconditionally. 

* If you don't know this and feel like a laugh check it out. Pick a film or film franchise you know to begin with, and then have fun exploring. 

New Nails

 

and aren't they a pretty colour? It was part of a new set that L had got in for Christmas and I was very tempted by it last time, but  had already decided I wanted the icy coloured ones for Vienna. 

I was planning to hang on to the Vienna ones until we went away next month, but they wouldn't have lasted. I tend not to chip the gel, but the nails do get long and then I catch them or they get turned back (ouch!) and then break, so really I should schedule my appointments more because the nails have grown than that the gel is growing out. 

Anyway because these are just an 'in-between set' I didn't have anything extra put on them, but they are pretty enough as is I think. 

....and unhappy mail

This should have  been more happy mail really, as I had ordered some cards from Green Pebble, and they arrived along with my wool, yesterday. 

Sadly they arrived in a cardboard mailer that looked like this

and because they, very laudably, do not use cellophane/plastic packaging most of the cards inside were damp and scrumpled. 

I would not have minded so much had it not taken me a very long time to choose them in the first place. Although I would still have minded a bit. 

Anyway I rang them up and a very helpful girl asked me to send photos of the damage - she said this was to help them assess what had happened, although I don't think there is any doubt here that what happened was that the mailer got split, wet and possibly dropped on the ground into a puddle. I suspect she meant, so that we can be sure you are not trying to pull a fast one, but she was kind enough not to say so. And she took the names of the affected cards and said they would send out replacements. 

I couldn't have asked for better customer service for something which really was not 100% their fault, although I note that, since nothing had fallen out of the mailer, then if they used waterproof packaging inside it then  the cards would not have been damaged. Even so, they did well. And I got an e-mail this morning confirming that replacement cards had been sent out today. So a fast response as well as a good one. 

If you like beautiful cards on a variety of themes and in a variety of styles, and you don't already know them, worth checking out their website here 

And yes, two posts today, to make up for the lack of one yesterday!

Happy Mail ...

Helen at Giddy Yarns always has a post Christmas sale, and I haven't bought from it before because I've been signed up to her yarn clubs. However as you see  I did succumb this year, and not because I'm not signed up to a yarn club (although I'm not).

From the top we have Tea with Mr Tumnus in DK, which will become part of my big relaxed 'DK from gifts and on offer' project. Then there is  her 2022 November Colour of the Month and finally Strawberry and Vanilla. These two are both sock yarn and are destined for a sock knitting plan (not goal!) that I have for this year. 

 

Such pretty colours, I am itching to knit with them.

Off to a Flying Start - In a Way

 

I have several plans for my crafting this year, Note how carefully I do not say goals, as nothing sets you up to fail more than setting goals and then feeling hampered and restricted by them, and so left open to the allure of Other Things. And I'm not even  going to list my plans here, although  I do have them written down somewhere else, and  will post the ones that come to fruition and identify them as such. . As far as knitting goes the plans do include jumpers, but that's as far as I'm going. 

So I knitted the sweater shown above in 2020. I loved the pattern, it was in aran wool so it grew really quickly, and as soon as I had cast it off I excitedly tried it on and -  it was an utter disaster. It was meant to have a very wide and low neck but not so wide that it qualified almost as off the shoulder and not so low that, had I worn it without anything underneath, it showed cleavage. 

I was devastated ( in a knitting related way. Nobody died) And because it was only the second thing I had knitted top down, I had absolutely no idea how to go about correcting it and it has lived in a bag in  my study ever since. However, helped by a friend with much more knitting know-how than I have, who took one look and said , well you need to lose about a third of the stitches around the neck, and the class I took with Carole Feller last autumn which gave me an idea about what to do, I picked it up  two nights ago to try and make it  wearable. 

I measured, I counted,  got out my calculator and told myself that if it didn't work first time at least it would give me some idea about how to try again and it was all a good learning experience. And guess what? It worked first time. Who would have thunk? I was really pleased with myself. 

I was not so pleased with the jumper, which is shorter than I would have liked,and rather too form fitting for my comfort. Also the mos stitch border at the bottom flares (this is not me, I noted that others who have made this pattern had the same problem. If I could face it I would undo the border and redo it in rib, but I cant. The jumper is wearable as it is, and I will wear it. I'm even going to try another top down jumper pattern, because it is part of the plan, and I'm told it is a very well written pattern (which this one was not), has thoughtful  upsizing (which this one didn't)  and with some shaping (which this one also didn't have). So that may be a happier experience and with a better outcome. 

That said one new year  plan, fulfilled by 3rd January, is not bad going. 

There's Cosy, Now!

 

I had two new jigsaw  puzzles for Christmas and I finished the first one yesterday. When our son saw it he said 'Oh that is so you', and he's right. Presumably that's why it appealed. A warm stove, candles, coffee and pastries, a cat, books, jigsaw puzzles, knitting,  a memory scrapbook, family history research .... it really sums me up. Albeit the scrapbook and the family history are basically 'one day I'd like to' rather than things I currently do. But you know, one day I will. (cough,cough)

Meanwhile I'm going to leave this one on the table for a couple of days before taking it  down to make way for the other puzzle I got at Christmas. But this one s definitely a keeper. 

Raspberry Fool

Remember last summer when I was bemoaning the fact that we had so many raspberries and most of the delicious things I would normally make with them were forbidden to me for medical reasons? 

Well those days being sort of behind me now yesterday  I  made some raspberry fool for our new year dessert which we had with some shortbread. It was lovely. Due to the fact that it is very rich we only ate half of what I made then, which means we can have some more today. Hurray! 

 

Memories of Christmas and some Christmas Knitting.

Before it gets lost in the mists of time here are a few photo memories of our Christmas this year. Blogger has done that thing of adding selected photos in reverse order, so with apologies for taking you backwards through the day ....

Cake by Tesco, cake band by me

Our first ever time cooking red cabbage for Christmas dinner (or any other time for that matter). It doesn't look very nice but it was delicious, 

Christmas table. The napkins and place mats are decades old; I bought them from the Webb Ivory catalogue that son no 1 used to bring home every year from school; it was a fundraising thing. I think I've had enough of them now, so after a wash, which they have already had, and an iron, which they are waiting for, they will be despatched to the charity shop and next year we will buy some new Christmas place mats and use up some of the 100s of paper napkins I have on a Christmass-y theme. 

A quite exciting present bought in Prague. This was originally intended for grandson no. 2, but it became obvious when he was here in the summer that it would not be welcomed by him so I repurposed it for the OH who loves it and has attached it to the ceiling of his office. 

The world's most boring Christmas present. However it was on his wish list and he was very pleased with it. 

Someone always has to get a new Christmas jumper

Mozartkugeln from Vienna

Christmas baking, from the box in my advent swap, week 1. No I'm not showing the attempts we made at decoration! Disaster wasn't in it.  

And of course the Christmas socks, already shown on the blog a while back, but here actually on our feet. 

I made two other pairs of socks for Christmas presents. One was for my advent swap and the pattern is one of my go-tos; Hermione's Everyday Socks. It gives a great effect for very little effort.

and the other pair was for my sister. The pattern is Little Paddocks socks and it's lovely. There is a whole series of socks themed around Miss Marple Mysteries by the same designer on Ravelry  and one of my plans for 2023 is to knit them all, and possibly also the ones from her Jane Austen series too. 

Yarn in both cases was from The Knitting Goddess and came from stash (hooray)

And that's it for today, except to wish you a Happy New Year once again! May 2023 be good to us all (almost). Insert your own exceptions - my list starts with the loathly Jacob Rees Mogg.