Happy mail - but not wool

So I've been doing a little bit of cross stitch recently and I had in mind to do some small 'one day' designs from a magazine and then I could be rid of the magazine. This has been a vague idea for  awhile and is the reason that I took advantage of an offer of a linen taster pack; five 8 x 8 " pieces in different colours. And  then I added a magnetic needle minder for good measure because however much you tell yourself you're not going to leave a needle to go rusty in your fabric and in the design area in a piece of work you then neglect for months or even years - it does happen. You can imagine how I know.  Plus it was cute. 

Voila!

The grey one second from the left has a sparkly thread in it so I don't know that I'll be using that any time soon; but the others are very nice. I'm pleased with them. And the mouse. 

A Sunny Stroll

I don't think it will come as a surprise to anyone that I have been feeling a bit down recently, mainly due to the difficulties of dealing with the insurance company with the underpowered server which has in turn brought back all the horror and shock of the loss of the holiday. I was very unhappy yesterday and although we had thought about going out, since the weather was good I couldn't face it. We postponed until today. 

Last night I had a nightmare in which our insurance claim was knocked back in its entirety on the grounds that the person here who had referred it to head office was known to be an alcoholic. I have absolutely NO idea where that came from. No surprise then that when I finally lifted my weary not-very-well-refreshed head from my pillow this morning - somewhat later than might be considered desirable - I really didn't feel like dragging myself out today either. 

I made myself do it though. The sun was shining, and it was time to have a bit of a stern word and do something other than moon about the house. Consequently we got in the car and drove right over to the other side of Orkney to the cliffs of Yesnaby. Normally when we get to Yesnaby we get out of the car and turn left to walk along the cliff but today, skittish types that we are (ha,ha), we opted to turn right. This led to a fearsome stile - 

seriously? 3 storeys? and took us towards the Brough of Borwick. We didn't go all the way to the Brough which involves fording a small stream and rather more up and down than I was happy to do given that it's not a proper path, I wasn't wearing walking boots and  the Brough isn't all that interesting when you get there. I have been to it once - and once was enough. In the days when the OH was a Volunteer Heritage Ranger he used to litter pick at Borwick, but that's a long time ago now. 

The views aren't really as interesting when you turn left as when you turn right as the coastline isn't quite so dramatically eroded and in any case you're rather further from the cliff edge so it's more difficult to see. But I did take  a couple of nice photos. 

As you can see it's a really beautiful day. We dropped into Stromness on the way back hoping to have coffee and cake at Julia's Shed, but all that was left was Malteser tray bake and date flapjack, neither of which floats our boats, so we came home. We stopped at Celina Rupp's, again in hope of coffee and cake, but it was the same story; cheese scones, flapjack, gluten free muffins and some lemon curd swiss roll. On another day I might have forced down the swiss roll, but it's not my favourite, it's always rather too sharp there for my taste and really what is the point of paying almost £4 for a slice of cake that you know before it arrives you are not going to enjoy? 

We're home now and after a late lunch I baked a cake which is even now in the oven. This is partly because our boy is arriving tomorrow night for a week's holiday from Glasgow and if your boy is coming home there has to be cake. The OH is out in the garden building a bridge; for which read playing with his new chain saw, but I think that's clearing the ground ready for the bridge building. It's to make easy access into our wood, all part of the pre-marketing house and garden spruce up. 

So after a fairly busy day, which has at least cheered me up a little bit, I'm off to do something relaxing. 

I need something soothing

 since I have discovered this morning that all the carefully collected information that it took so long to amass and then send to the insurance company yesterday did not arrive 'probably because our server could not cope with all of the attachments'. Since you are obliged to pursue your claim by sending a lot of documents and since they have to be attached to an e-mail this was not music to my ears. If they won't let you deal with your local branch and you can't send them the paper through the post the least they could do in my opinion is ensure that their s*dding server can cope with all the bumph it gets sent. 

I have now sent them three more e-mails with fewer attachments on each but since their server has only auto-acknowledged one I have a feeling it has only accepted one and the other two are still languishing somewhere in the ether. This fills me with neither joy not confidence. 

I am totally frazzled, I cannot settle to anything (not even knitting!) I tell myself all the things like 'the ball is in  their court' and 'you have done as much as you can' and  'park it until you hear back' etc etc but none of these helps.  Nor does it help reflecting that none of this is my fault - not the original cancellation of the holiday, nor the limited capacity of the insurer's server, and yet I am the one with shredded nerves wandering round unable to function. I know all the stuff about how life isn't fair and you shouldn't expect it to be but in this instance I do feel other people could be making more of an effort to make it slightly less unfair than it is. 

I was going to post some beautiful photos of a Japanese garden that we visited the day before our ill-fated flight to London but somehow I can't being myself to do it today. Maybe tomorrow if the insurance people have stepped up to the plate. 

Phew!

I just spent quite a long time this morning getting all the ducks in a row for the insurance claim re the lost holiday. All now done and sent off, so just have to wait now  and see how much we get. It is scary how much extra cost is involved because we live in Orkney; I know everyone has to get to the airport or train statin for their holidays but not many have to travel as far as we do. 

Getting a replacement passport for the OH proved a bit of a nightmare too. I'm sure we were promised computers were going to make our lives easier, but I'm not sure I'm convinced. 

Possibly another and much more interesting post later in the day; for now I feel like the proverbial wrung out rag. 

You Decide

unforgiveable falling off of wagon or understandable consolation?

These arrived yesterday

Three skeins of Monet inspired yarn from the yarn artist. Well, after all, I wasn't going to be seeing the real thing so this was in the nature of an appropriate comfort gift to myself. I ordered three skeins of undyed from her as well and I know what I'm going to make with them , although I'm not sure when I'll get it cast on. Soon enough for the yarn not to skew my stash numbers for too long I hope. 

So what do you think? No reason why I shouldn't look for some consolation where I could find it? Or just a case of any old excuse to buy more wool? 

A Lovely Surprise

I was expecting a parcel yesterday from the  the Glasgow Soap Company which duly arrived and yes, do click the link, their stuff is gorgeous and they're very quick to deliver. No surprise then that their parcel arrived when they said it would, but very surprised to be also handed a very long thin box from postie marked Bloom and Wild. Which, when I opened it, contained a lovely selection of flowers, as above, and a consolatory card from my sister because of my lost holiday. 

It was a lovely thought and the flowers are gorgeous. I photographed them in the usual place on the front hall window sill but then moved them into the living room because in there I can find somewhere that's not in direct sunlight, so helping them to last longer.

I was half expecting another parcel which didn't come yesterday but did arrive today. More on that tomorrow...

 

Happy Valley

We were supposed to be going to Happy Valley yesterday but the weather wasn't very nice so we put it off until today. For once, procrastination was rewarded because, although there was quite a thick haar in places today, Happy Valley wasn't one of them. 

We tend to go two or three times a year and always try to catch the bluebells. It's so beautiful there and I always take loads of photographs. Here a few from today.

It was a lovely gentle morning walk. 

Completed Projects April

I spent some time in April knitting up my Little Grey Cells Club Yarn but that's far from completed so doesn't count. 

There was the standard non-knitting project, this time a cross stitch card

It's lovely but it took a very long time to stitch. Don't think that's an experience I'll be repeating. 

Then there were two pairs of socks

These were for me; pattern Oh Hello Socks and the wool was Giddy Yarns Poisoned Apple from a fairy tale themed club she did a few years ago. 

Anyone thinking these might look vaguely familiar would be right; I tried making them as a Christmas present for the OH several years ago. They didn't fit, because I hadn't taken in that the wool I was using was DK weight and had therefore used my normal needles and cast on numbers for 4 ply. I had a lot of the yarn left over - goodness only knows why I bought so much of it in the first place - and I had always meant to have another go. The yarn was languishing in Box 2 so doing them was a bit of a no brainer. I have to say he was thrilled with them and here they are being modelled. They looked huge as they were being knitted but they fitted well. Possibly neither of us appreciate quite how big his feet are.

And finally there was a cowl; yet another iteration of the Anne of Green Gables Sampler Cowl. It wasn't meant to be, I had originally intended just to use the numbers and i-cord edging and make the centre all moss stitch. However it quickly became apparent that if I stuck to that plan I might be wearing the cowl by the time I was 75, or I might not. The yarn was supposed to be fingering weight, which I sort of doubted since it was  called Ella Rae Lace Merino but everywhere I looked said it was definitely not lace weight - and I suppose it isn't, but it ain't a particularly robust 4ply either. I've had this in my stash for years, having got it in a swap and never really known what to do with it, but I loved the colours too much to give it away. I'm pleased I've used it up and I'm pleased with the result, so win/win I suppose. 

I honestly don't feel it was a very productive month; fingers crossed for better, or at least more, things in May!

The Great Wool Sort Out Update 3

First off the stats, which are disappointing in that I ended the month with a net increase.The numbers were Wool In - 984g, Wool Out -  734g,  which was a net increase of 250g. Part of the large amount of yarn in was the clubs which was expected, and part of it was receiving quite  a large amount of yarn. much more than anticipated,  in  a swap. I didn't use up quite as much as I would have liked either because I took on two very time consuming projects in April which, although lovely when finished, seemed to take ages to do and didn't use up much wool. I am still 3179g down on the year to date though, so that's good.   

And look! what is this? 

This my friends is Box 2 and it is empty. Hooray! Some of the wool in there got sold, some of it got given away, some of it got used up. Some of it went into other boxes; the stuff I have specific plans for went back into Box 1 to wait until I have time to carry out said plans, some 4 ply went into the big 4 ply box and some stuff I was unsure about moved into Box 4 to be considered at a later date. But I have an empty box and that's a win. 

Here is Box 3 which is being dealt with in May and June. 

To the left of the demarcating carrier bag are all my commercial sock yarn left overs. The right side has various other left overs of different weights, some of which I will sell and some of which will doubtless find its way to the charity shop.  

My plan for the sock yarn is to hold it double and crochet a granny stripe blanket and to this end I added to the box all my partial balls of West Yorkshire Spinners* sock wool, after which it looked like this.

I have rather gone off WYS for socks as I find it both splitty and too thin, and there is always loads left. Some people might call that value for money, and I can't argue with that. But I would prefer a plumper softer yarn with less yardage to the ball, because then there is less left over to hang about  cluttering  up the yarn storage because, while there is too little to be of much practical use, there is too much to throw away. Hence the granny stripe blanket, which I have been told will use up mountains of yarn.  I have started this today, very carefully and following a You Tube tutorial, because I have very little confidence in my crocheting abilities. I'd like to get more confident and expand my crochet skills and although a granny stripe blanket will not do much to teach me anything new, it will hopefully make me more confident. I am on row three and so far it looks fine ....

* Yes that does live elsewhere. The six plastic boxes contain my main stash but I also have two sets of small plastic drawers where I keep specific sorts of yarn; my very small stash of cotton yarn, my mini skeins, some other bits, and my WYS yarn. The full and partial balls of the WYS took up two of the drawers  but  after I had removed the partial balls to be put into the blanket, I found I could fit the rest of the WYS into one drawer rather than two. So a double win really; an empty box and an empty drawer. Go me. 

Oh Look! Not in France

 Somewhere between boarding the London flight in Glasgow and arriving at St Pancras Eurostar Terminal the OH lost his passport. Possibly left on the plane. Wherever it is, the fact that he didn't have it meant we couldn't travel. All my lovely plans for the next two weeks gone in an instant.

There are no words to express how devastating this is for me. Other people might take it  in their stride but I am just too miserable to speak. It follows that, although I'm back, I'm too miserable to blog as well. 

I will be back here , but no idea when.  

No new nails ...

 as unfortunately the person who does them has fallen sick again. I am off to France with 9 half grown out daisy and bee nails and one that is currently bare, as the gel came off in one piece a week ago. I'll be painting it in a contrasting colour before we catch the plane on Thursday; best I could do as green nail varnish is thin on the ground. How very not surprising.  The actual holiday is by Eurostar but we're flying from Glasgow to London on Thursday morning early, with what in theory is plenty of time to get to  St Pancras to check in on the train. We've never been on the Eurostar before so that will be a new experience and I'm looking forward to it. 

In the absence of exciting new nails I thought I would review the Waterstones Fantasy/Sci-Fi book of the month for March. No, I haven't read February's yet. Maybe when I get back. Meanwhile this was March's offering

I should perhaps  have liked this more than I did, but I was disappointed in it. It was a bit of a Boys Own Adventure Yarn albeit one with a middle aged female Muslim  (retired pirate) protagonist, rather than a white male public school educated explorer type. And it was set around places in the  Indian Ocean rather than in the 'dark heart of Africa' which was something a bit different too, and during the Crusades, although they take place off to the left as it were.  Think The Arabian Nights with the occasional reality check - the heroine has a bad knee for example which occasionally lets her down during her fantastical adventures, and a bit of 'real history thrown in as a sort of anchor. 

Chakraborty has been recommended to me before, for  her Daevabad series, but I never finished the first of those, so perhaps I should have realised that I wouldn't necessarily find this one particularly gripping either. I did like it enough to finish it though. It was obviously setting up for several sequels, but I won't be buying nay of those, as I'm not sufficiently invested in any of the characters.

So the current score is; January a hit, March a miss, February not yet started, April waiting for me to pick up in Glasgow and May just about to be announced. Hoping to be caught up before the June one comes out. 

Firth Park Photo Project - April

Suddenly so many things to put on the blog and so little time in which to do it. Before I forget again though, like I did for February, or possibly March, here are the photos of Firth Park for this month.  I'm glad we went this morning because it is now chucking it down with rain. Even this morning it was very cold, so cold that when I tentatively suggested a trip to Geri's the OH, in a response I would previously have bet against ever hearing from him, said 'No, it's too cold for Geri's, even for me.' Which was a bit of a relief as I had only suggested it for him; all I wanted to do was get home and snuggle up. Which in view of the rain, was a Good Call. 

Tomorrow -  new nails....

Rest of Stockholm Round Up

So as it's almost time for our next trip away I thought I should finish up talking about our trip to Stockholm. 

The main event i.e. reason for going to Stockholm in March was the OH's desire to see Parsifal on stage. Apparently it's not done very often. To which my response is, well thank goodness for that because wild horses could not drag me to another performance of it. The Stockholm one was, as always, beautifully played and very well sung, but Act 1 has more not-quite-endings than Peter Jackson's Return of the King and  I was just bored stiff all the way through.That said, apart from a few niggles with the production the OH really enjoyed it so that was the main thing.  

It was destined to be an unhappy evening for me all round  because after the opera we went for dinner to what was until then our favourite restaurant in Stockholm, an Italian/Swedish place that we have previously always gone to when in the city.  Never again. We were the only customers, we felt distinctly uncomfortable and there's nothing says that you're unwelcome so much as the waiter approaching you during your main course and asking if you're going to want a dessert because if so they can prepare them now so they are ready as soon as you've finished the main.  And then they will be able to close the restaurant. Since this wasn't much after nine and they are supposed to be open until eleven I wasn't impressed. 

Other than that the only other thing we did that I haven't mentioned so far was to visit the toy museum which was surprisingly underwhelming considering how much I normally enjoy a good toy museum. I wasn't however feeling at my sparkling best that morning so perhaps my view was a trifle jaundiced. 

You will see from the photograph that I continue to come upon weird and wonderful statues wherever I go. I used to think it was only in cities where I went to conferences, but it seems that's just not the case! 

We have not booked another trip to Stockholm for the foreseeable future but I suspect it is only a matter of time. Meanwhile, roll on the Loire Valley next week although I'll be here a couple of times again before we go. 

Adopting Scandi Style

Well not really. It's just that when we go to Nordic countries we're always taken with the fact that they  have either cut flowers or flowering plants somewhere in the room. And they look lovely. 

Now my views on houseplants will be well known to long time readers here, as will the fact that I tend to think that cut flowers are all very well but a nuisance once they're over and you have to faff about getting then  out of manky water (assuming you've remembered to keep  the water topped up) and then washing the vase. 

But we were in the supermarket yesterday and the bunches of tulips  caught my eye and voila

I couldn't resist and they give a spring like touch to the hall windowsill. We pass this a gazillion times a day, which I reckon means at least half a gazillion smiles brought  to my face every day. . 

An American in Paris

Generic photo of Sacre Coeur there, from my trip last spring. Best I could do. 

So there's currently a series of filmed musicals doing the rounds of British cinemas; Kinky Boots (really not our thing), Titanic (someone thought it was a good idea to make a musical about the Titanic?), 42nd Street (also so not our thing for different reasons) and An American in Paris. We have been bombarded with trailers for these every time we've been to the cinema since Christmas and I wouldn't have taken a lot of notice except that I've never seen the original film of An American in Paris and the dancing in the trailer looked wonderful. So I suggested we go, and we did. 

Musicals are a bit weird aren't they? I've been struggling over the last few days to try and put my finger on exactly why I should think musicals are weird but accept opera at face value and I finally did. It's because  the dialogue in musicals is so stilted. It's there to carry on the plot and tee the audience up for the next big song, but it conveys only information and not emotion. In this a musical is different from a play, where the dialogue does both jobs, and opera where the music does both jobs, or at least the words and music  are so closely aligned that you can't tell where one ends and the other begins.  Musicals break that old adage of writing, 'don't tell, show' because in a musical the dialogue is all about the telling. 

That said, and leaving aside such minor details as my inability to understand what on earth the three leading men saw in the leading lady, a simpering cipher with, in this case, a mouthful of teeth and a bit of an edge to her vocal tone, and the way the actor who was called upon to be New York Jewish just couldn't do the accent, and the constant self preening of the man who was Henri who spent most of the time looking at the audience rather than his co-performers, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it because the dancing was indeed wonderful and a joy to watch. It made me smile and really, that's a good thing in itself. 

 

Some recent reading

 

No I haven't gulped all of these down in the six days since I ditched the poster; only one of them, and the other two were finished before that. 

I've not previously been a fan of Karin Slaughter who I find a bit on the gruesome side and who writes a lot about violence perpetrated on women by men. This one came via a friend and I wasn't sure if I had read it before. By the time I was far enough in to realise I hadn't, I was hooked on the story. Slaughter writes well, has plausible plots and believable characters, although she has created, in one of her minor recurring characters, one of the most irritating female cops in the annals of crime fiction. But if you can get past the gory bits, worth a go and  I shall now be looking out for more of her books.

I documented my surprise a while back  at how much I had enjoyed  the Val MacDiarmid  Carol Jordan/Tony Hill books also given to me by a friend and took the opportunity when down in Glasgow recently to buy the next one in the series. Well up to scratch and with a shocking twist at the end. I don't know where she went from there but I'll be getting hold of the next one to find out as soon as I can. 

I approached the Clytemnestra with some trepidation, on the once bitten twice shy principle.  The bad news is that Casati is no Madeline Miller or Natalie Haynes, lacking the lyrical prose skills of the first and the sardonic edge of the other. The good news is that thankfully she's no Clare Heywood or Jennifer Saint either and the book was very enjoyable. Clytemnestra was never cuddly in this book; well, she was brought up in Sparta after all, but Casati is excellent at showing how little by little all the softer feelings she does have are stamped out of her as she experiences betrayal after betrayal by various members of her family. Mostly the men, but her alcoholic mother is complicit in a lot of it, and her brat  of a little sister is as infuriating as she is in every other book I've read that she appears in. When (spoiler) she finally murders her unspeakable husband the reader is cheering her on. 

I also read the first book in my complete Susan Cooper The Dark is Rising volume. It was written for a much younger audience than me and read a bit like Enid Blyton on steroids in places, but I'm looking forward to getting around to the next one which was aimed at older readers.

Finally the book that broke me as far as the poster went was Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie. This had all the things I normally look for in a book; a wide cast of differentiated and credible characters, a plot (somewhat scattered, but still recognisably linear!), some interesting ideas behind its construction and subject matter, and excellent writing. It was to all intents and purposes a Good Book, I could see why it won the Booker, I understand why people hailed Rushdie as a brilliant prospect when it was first published and - it bored me to tears. I didn't want to finish it, and I didn't. I put it in the charity shop box at the same time as I put the poster in the bin. I think I'm done with 'improving reading' at least for a while. I'm going to wallow in detective, fantasy and historical fiction for the foreseeable. As the late great Barry Norman probably used to say 'And why not?'

The Thiel Gallery

It always amazes me that, despite the number of times we have been to Stockholm, we still find things of interest that we've never been to before.This time we had a lovely day at the Thiel gallery, a place of whose very existence we had lived in ignorance until  recently. 

Basically it's a large house that used to belong to a wealthy industrialist who also collected art. In the way these things often go he made a lot of money quite fast and lost most of it even faster, but not before he had built  a beautiful Art Nouveau house in one of the wealthiest parts of Stockholm, and bought  a lot of pictures. These were all - house and pictures - acquired by the state in the mid 1920s and the house, complete with furniture and pictures, was subsequently opened to the public. 

We went on the ferry which is always a fun way to travel around the city and then walked up (very much up!) to the house. The house itself is beautiful and the art is stupendous. Thiel collected mainly Nordic Art although there's a second division Gauguin and a not very good Toulouse Lautrec in there as well. But it is the pictures by  Munch, Zorn, Jansson and, above all for us, Carl  Larsson that were in some cases a revelation and in others just an unmitigated delight. I have to say the Larsson collection at the Thiel is infinitely superior to that which is on display at the National Gallery. The NG may of course have a number of Larsson's that aren't hung but the Thiel has a room full of them and they are all lovely. 

There is a shop (see previous post re shopping for the poster and jigsaw puzzle) and a beautiful cafe overseen by a star Swedish chef (although obviously not in person.) It was just an amazing day and one we plan to repeat next time we're in the city. Meanwhile I learned two things; that I really like big landscapes and that no-one can paint snow like a Scandinavian. 

A selection of photos below 

 art nouveau embroidered piano cover - isn't it gorgeous?

dessert in the cafe. I didn't take  a picture of the meatballs we had for our main course. Look at that glorious tray with a design from one of the gallery's pictures on it. 

cafe windowsill and view 

And some of the paintings 

these four were all monumental in size and just breathtaking. The bottom one is rather chillingly called Sacrificial Grove. The two pics below are of some of the Larssons. 

 It was a fabulous day out and I hope we can repeat it. 

More Happy Mail

Yes, the club yarns from Erin at Henny Penny Makes have arrived. 

First up is the  Little Grey Cells club,  themed around Agatha Christie's Poirot books. The first quarter is The Mysterious Affair at Styles. 

I have been waiting for several weeks for the designer to release the blanket pattern I wanted to use these club yarns in, and the yarn arrived yesterday and the pattern was released today so that was good timing. 

Then there is the minis club, this year themed around the Colours of the Seashore. 

L to R  March, February January - because I hadn't realised I should have rotated the photo before I uploaded it to the blog. These will also be going into  a blanket but I haven't bought that pattern for that one yet. 

 

So the arrival of those has derailed the de-stash numbers a bit! but hopefully by the end of the month that will have sorted itself out. I'm in the  middle of a fun colourwork destash project just now, but I might just make a start on the Little Grey Cells blanket this week because it's basically garter stitch and will make a nice rest from the vagaries of the colourwork now and again. 

The Books to Read Poster ...

 ...has been binned. 

This is what it looked like before it took the one way trip to the recycling bin. A little over half way 'done.'

I could have scraped the silver off all the little pictures before I threw it away just to see what they looked like but I couldn't be bothered. I'm not going to read them, so I can probably live without seeing the (sometimes wildly unrelated) illustrations. 

It's a bit of a relief actually. 

Things we did manage to buy in Stockholm

there's not a lot because we are past the stage of needing a souvenir of the city itself. We did however go to a new(to us) Art Gallery, of which more another day, and there I bought a new jigsaw puzzle 

and a poster 

A poster is a stupid thing to buy to bring back from holiday really unless the place you buy it from offers it in a protective cardboard tube which this one didn't. The girl behind the till overheard me saying to the OH how much I liked it - they had half a dozen or so of previous special exhibitions up on the wall and said 'We have that for sale in that basket over there' so I sort of felt obliged to buy one since I had just been saying how much I loved it, without really thinking through the practicalities. Anyway we stuffed it with socks and got it back unscathed. It's now on the back of my study door and it looks really good. 

Over in Gamla Stan (The Old Town) there is a Sci-Fi bookshop, although calling it a sci-fi bookshop is a bit like describing  an eight course banquet as a nice meal. It's amazing. It does sell sci-fi books but it sells an awful lot of other fantasy/sci-fi related stuff. We'd been past it before but never gone in; this time we thought we'd give it a go and see if we could find a nice present for Son no 2., which we did. We spent ages in the shop and I saw three things I really wanted and bought two of them. Which is good going for me. The one I didn't buy was the follow up book to Godkiller, which a couple of months ago I was lamenting in this very place  would not be out in paperback until next January. Well it transpired that it in some places it must be out a lot sooner than that, since it was sitting on the shelves of this shop in Stockholm. Possibly it was an LFP (large format paperback) if they still do those. I planned to buy it since I was keen to read it but then on the upper level (yes, there's a lower level, a mezzanine and an upper level, the place is huge)  I saw this

and I just had to have it. I'd already seen some stationery I wanted - that looked like this - 

and as I couldn't justify buying two books and some writing paper on a whim all for myself - which I recognise is irrational and foolish, but it's how I am - I decided against buying the Godkiller follow up and settled for the stationery and the LotR knitting book. 

I know the stationery is designed with the tastes of adolescent Japanese girls in mind but I liked it and  I'm learning to accept that sometimes I just like 'cute stuff' and to go with the flow. The pattern book is amazing. Often when you buy a book full of patterns you only really like maybe 4 or 5 of them and I didn't look all the way through this one before I bought  it, because really what LotR fan who is also a knitter doesn't want to knit something called 'Second Breakfast Mittens' as featured on the front cover here and isn't too bothered about the rest? However almost all of the patterns in the book, of which there are 27, spoke to me in a good way. I won't be kitting a Gollum toy, or a dwarf helmet any time soon but many of the rest may eventually turn up here.  

Not exactly fork handles

more your actual three. That will only mean anything in conjunction with the photo  if you're a certain age and acquainted with the work of British comedian Ronnie Barker. 

But yes,  I got the candle making kit out again. I made  a big one in a tin for us and then two smaller ones for a swap. The swap theme is recycling so I've recycled two of the small jars from the Bonne Maman advent. I think they look quite cute. 

They're lavender scented candles. Not one of my favourite scents but it was one that came in the kit along with the purple dye and my swap partner does like lavender so it seems an apt choice. Being still at the learning stage I think that this time I have overdone, rather than underdone the dye, and possibly underdone the scent. It's really difficult to tell with the smell but fingers crossed there will be a vague scent of lavender when they are lit. 

Talking of the Bonne Maman advent I never really reviewed it once it was finished. I enjoyed having it, but I wouldn't buy it again because a lot of the jams tasted very similar and most of them were too sweet, even for me. And I have a famously sweet tooth.  That said there was a cinnamon caramel spread in there and if they sold that in big jars I would buy it all the time because it was gorgeous. 

In other, totally unrelated news, I was at the dentist this morning to have a filling repaired. Much to my amazement it was painless. Apart from the bill of course. 

Latest Jigsaw

I got this at Christmas and it took me a while to pluck up the courage to give it a go. I daresay it's obvious why. It's not quite the double sided plate of baked beans puzzle that makes me wonder why on earth anyone would want to do it, but the limited colour palette and the fact that all the pieces were the same shape did make it harder than some others I have done.  It was a challenge but mostly I enjoyed doing it. It's called The Real Women of Greek Myths and I was rather startled by the eclectic nature of their clothing, some of which is very 'not ancient Greek'. There was a poster inside identifying all the characters with a brief description by the inimitable Natalie Haynes.  Not quite how I envisaged some of them, but that just made it more interesting really. 

Next up, when I can bring myself to disassemble this one, will be something rather more traditional. 

A new family saying.

I find that once the children have grown up you don't tend to develop new family sayings even though you cling to the ones that came with their toddlerhood; why else would we describe duvets as 'squilts' or quietly shriek 'new shoes, new shoes' when we buy - well yes, a new pair of shoes. Although that's not one that gets used that often in our house to be honest. 

But we did develop a new one in Stockholm this trip  so now if you go somewhere expecting to be able to buy something there, only to find that it is out of stock or not stocked at all any more, this is described by us as  a 'Vasa Museet Hoodie Situation.

Many years ago on a trip to Stockholm the OH treated himself to a Vasa Hoodie in the Vasa Museum shop. He loved it, he's worn it a lot, it needs replaced really, as it's at the stage of being OK to wear around the house/get in the coal and not really OK to be seen anywhere else. We zapped over on the ferry to the Vasa Museum in December to  buy him  a new one, only to find that the only ones they had in stock were Adult Small, which were no good at all. We reasoned that the stocks were low because it wasn't tourist season and that they would be stocking up again ready for summer 2024 in due course and so when we ere there in March we zapped over yet again, only to discover that the whole hoodie/t-shirt wall had shrunk and there was, if anything, even less stock than there had been in December. We have reluctantly concluded that hoodies may not be the way the Powers That Be see the Museum Shop moving forward, which is a shame. Although as I pointed out, I did buy him a very funny hoodie from Very British Problems for his birthday so its not as though he is hoodie-less. 

Also while we were  there in December we made our first trip to the refurbished National Gallery where I saw a beautiful book about European Portraiture through the Ages. It was quite large and quite heavy and we didn't have an awful lot of room in the suitcases as we had taken thick warm clothing and since we were coming back in March I said, 'I'll check on Amazon and see if I can get that at home, and if not I will get in March when we come for Parsifal. It was not visible on Amazon and so, dear reader, one morning on our recent trip we sailed into the National Museum Shop, walked to their book shelves to pull out  a copy of the book, and they didn't have  one. They had about six  last December plus two copies in their Old Library but even those, when we checked, were gone. A lesson learned I thought, although to be be honest it probably hasn't been . Not 100% anyway. I say this because yesterday in Tesco I saw some little cream jugs with some cream and  lemon artificial flowers in them; they were so pretty and not expensive and I thought they would go on the windowsill in the hall. 'If you like- get' said the OH, but a little voice in my head said 'you might like it, but you don't need it, do you?' and so I put it back and said I would think about it. I suspect the next time I am in Tesco they will all be gone. But there again, since I don't need it, I won't miss it, will I? 

So there you have it - A Vasa Museet Hoodie Situation. You have the money and the will to spend it; they no longer have the stock. 

To add insult to injury, we had planned to assuage our disappointment by having coffee and cake in the Vasa Museum's cafe, but whether temporarily or permanently this could only be accessed via the Museum itself. It's a lovely museum, don't think it's not, but I've done it twice and I didn't feel the need to do it again. 

But it wasn't all loss. We decamped to The Viking Museum whose cafe and shop you are very welcome to access without paying to enter the museum. we ordered hot chocolate and I kid you not it was the best hot chocolate I have ever had. In my life. Not discounting the one we had in the famous cafe in Vienna.

Mine was the brownie, the chocolate coconut thing was the OH's and the cookie was on the house because the girl behind the counter thought we had waited too long for her to bring the hot chocolate due to two demanding Americans who wanted one espresso and two glasses of hot water between them.  It wasn't a problem really, we didn't care,  but she insisted. We wrapped it up and took it away for later. Like the things we had actually ordered, it was delicious. 

Happy Mail

Happy mail can really only mean one thing, can't it? The yarn has started arriving. 

Today was the Yarn  and Book Club Spring Quarter from Beehive Yarns. I doubt I would have ordered this had it not been for the fact that the book was Anne of Green Gables, a perennial favourite. So the idea is you get some yarn themed around the book, a nice copy of the book itself and some little extras. 

Here it all is

The book and a book mark, some tea and some chocolate (white chocolate with raspberries - yum!) two flowery stickers, two daisy shaped needle stoppers, a small project bag, a pin that says 'Kindred Spirits', a wooden needle gauge marked with US and MM needle sizes plus 15cms and 6 inches. And of course the yarn which is gorgeous. Beth at beehive Yarns has a great eye for my sort of colour.

I did haver about buying it originally but I'm so glad I did. Apart from anything else I had a miserable morning being quite poorly so as you can imagine this cheered me up no end. (Except for the thought that this month that is yarn in and so far there is no yarn out. But we're only at 5th of the month and there are two projects very near to completion, so that should start righting itself very soon. 

and yes there will be more about Stockholm soon. 

Firth park 2.0; February and March.

 Looks like I forgot to do  a post about the Firth Park photograph project up in February, so we'll play catch up this month and hope to do better in future. 

February

and then March, which we did last Friday

It was a lovely day weather wise, as was the rest of the Easter weekend; sadly we are back to cold winds and grey skies now. There were so many beautiful pictures from Firth Park to choose from, even though when we first glanced up the path it didn't look as though it was going to be very inspiring. It shows the importance of really looking I suppose. 

In other news, a final word on the velvetiser. We are so very pleased that we bought it. It makes a lovely drink with a beautiful texture and no lumps and no watery taste which can so often be the case with hot chocolate made at home (in our experience. Other people might be total magicians with it.) That said our preference is for making it with chocolate powder from  a jar rather than the expensive chocolate flakes recommended and sold by Hotel Chocolat. So a definite thumbs up from us.