The Brochure Came

 

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

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

Quick Update

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

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

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

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

Crafty Bits and Bobs Part 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

Simples! but Effectives! 

Some Crafty Bits and Bobs Part 1

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

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

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

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

There were some cards

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

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

  

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

Part 2 tomorrow - probably. 

Consolatory Mail.

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

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

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

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

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

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

February Wool Stats and Other Things

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

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

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

The project photos look a bit meagre 

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

and these 

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

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

Reading Challenge Catch Up

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just a Bit Cross!

So back on 21st January, which is not all that long ago, is it?  I made this post. 

See that bit where the dentist told me it wasn't a crack, just a badly recessed gum? Well if that was really the case why did said non-cracked tooth suddenly start crumbling to dust yesterday? 

So instead of having an uncomfortable half hour or so getting an awkward filling done last month,  and coming away with the  problem solved, I now have to go next Monday (earliest he can do, let's hope it doesn't start hurting, eh?) and have work done on a much more compromised tooth which I am very afraid he is going to have to extract. Which will be no fun at all. 

Now admittedly I never went to dentist school so I'm not an expert but I really think the likelihood is that that tooth was cracked when I said it was and went to see him in the first place. Not  a happy bunny. And even less happy come next Monday I suspect. 

The Scottish Play

 

Our cinema trip at the weekend was to see the film version of the Donmar Warehouse production of MacBeth, starring David Tennant and Cush Jumbo and which had rave reviews when it was first performed. 

I can't pretend we were overwhelmed with wonder. OK , it was MacBeth so a good watch, and it was David Tennant - has he ever turned in a duff performance?  Jumbo was a huge disappointment; even allowing for Lady MacBeth being a thankless part her performance was anything but cohesive and a lot of the time we couldn't make out what she was saying. Five stars from me to an actress called Rona Morrison who took several smaller roles, including that of Lady MacDuff and was excellent in them all. Thumbs down to the  updating of the role of the porter from us; I daresay others thought it was funny/a wonderful idea/ great stuff. 

Am I glad we went? Yes.

Would I go again? No. 

So this really funny (as in odd) thing happened ....

on Sunday morning. We heard a car coming up the drive and assumed it must be the woman who wanted the spare roof insulation that we had offered on the local FB group page recently.

But when we opened the door we were accosted ( quite cheerfully) by someone resembling a disreputable twin brother of Bernard Cribbins, who took one look at the OH and declared 'No, you're the wrong man' .

Anyway it turned out that out he was looking for the local MSP who actually lives in the house two fields behind us. We gave him the relevant directions for which he thanked us and then said 'I didn't want to be bothering him on a Sunday morning but he's never at that place in town for longer than 45 minutes is he?' That place in town is presumably the constituency office, and I'm sure the MSP, despite his, to me, deplorable unionist beliefs, is there for more than 45 minutes at a time. And available by appointment.

Anyway off he popped. 'Do you think Liam's in?' I said to the OH. 'Not if he sees that guy coming he's not' he replied. Which made me laugh.

But really what was the man thinking? Doorstepping his MSP on a Sunday morning? Desperate, unthinking or just rude?

The woman for the roof insulation, despite being local and told exactly when we were in at the weekend, which was almost all of it bar a trip to the cinema, opted to come when we were out. We left the stuff out for her to collect and when we came back it was gone. I suppose it saved us making small talk while she collected it.

More about the cinema trip another day.

s

And Now for Some Happy Mail .

Both my anticipated pieces of happy mail came yesterday while I was out at Saturday Slaughters, so that was nice to come back to. 

First up was this. 

I know, yarn. But lovely yarn, the first in a series based on Great Paintings. I haven't signed up for the whole year, intending to pick and choose depending on artist/painting, but this first one was dancers and Degas  so I wasn't passing that one up. The colour is certainly not what I was expecting (!) which is not to say I don't like it, and I wasn't expecting the print either. So that was a nice surprise. 

And secondly was this

A Yoshi backpack. I know, it's only days since I was congratulating myself on talking myself out of buying one of these, but when we were south we met up with a friend who had a small backpack about this size and she was very enthusiastic. We'd actually seen the Yoshi ones  on our way down because we had called in at the Highland Chocolatier in Grandtully where they stock various Yoshi thigs in their very lovely gift shop and after talking to D.  I suggested we drove back that way and I would get one. 

Luckily I opened my e-mails before we set out and imagine my delight to have an e-mail from the company with a '20% off and free postage' offer on everything on  their website. So we skipped the trip to Grandtully and I ordered this when we got home. 

The OH asked if they had sent 'the right one' because it isn't the Jane Austen design of which I have a matching set of almost everything they do. I sighed because we had already twice gone through the thing about how I didn't like the JA design in the backpack and how much nicer it was in this new design. I'm quite pleased I was able to set aside the completist part of me and actually order it in something different tbh, And I'm very pleased I got 20% off!

Not Quite as Happy as All That Mail

Earlier in the week I got my 4th quarter Book and Yarn Box from Beth at Beehive Yarns. I ordered it way back in ?November,  partly to appease the completist side  of me and partly because the book was Hans Christian Andersens' Fairy Tales and it is decades since I read any of them. Plus the yarn was going to be based on The Snow Queen which always floats my boat. There's something about wintry sparkle and beautiful women that I can't resist. 

Here's the photo

I have to say I was a bit disappointed. Not with the yarn which is beautiful and a lot lovelier than it looks in my photograph, and not with the book, but the rest of it didn't seem to amount to much. There was the usual book bag, which is too small  to be of much use and we already have three, and the themed bookmark. There were some oat-y biscuits, which I don't like. I'm sick of getting little plastic needle stoppers which have also made a fairly regular appearance, and the suncatcher ( the snowflake shaped thing) was a bit tacky. I would have liked the soap, peppermint and eucalyptus, very nice- more, had I not already been up to my eyes in hand made soap, which is totally nothing to do with Beth; she can hardly send out a questionnaire to everyone beforehand saying 'do you want some lovely handmade soap in this quarters box?'  And the final thing was a block of chocolate on a spoon with some marshmallows that you melt in hot milk to make hot chocolate and I'm sure I'll enjoy that. I don't know if Beth is intending to carry on with these book and yarn boxes this year but I won't be buying any more. Apart from trying to limit yarn purchases again this year they are too hit and miss for me to feel that they are value for money. I haven't felt this way before so I'm not sure what tipped me over this time; maybe the needle stoppers. Or the biscuits. Or the suncatcher. Whatever, that was the last one. 

New blog posts are going to be patchy for a while. We are currently Going Through Stuff and Getting Rid of Things, two occupations which I'm sure will be only too familiar to anyone who has moved during the last few years. I am also constantly questioning why we have so much stuff? but you know, the ship has sort of sailed on that one! The OH has been going great guns with emptying the shed, the vast majority of the shed's contents are being ferried straight to the dump so the question does arise why we kept it in the first place .... We've been doing kitchen cupboards and book shelves a little at a time for a while now, so they're almost done and almost painlessly and I'm currently doing a massive cull of my paper crafting supplies. Hoping there will be some local groups who will take some of it off my hands. 

I am expecting some Happier Mail shortly though, and I'm still reading so there will be book posts. It's Saturday Slaughters tomorrow again already, and that may well be my last one! Eek. Here 's a surprise, I didn't enjoy the book. But more on that story later, as they used to say on some Radio 4 comedy program. 

Wool stats and Projects - A Good Start to the Year

Well I'm very pleased with this month's wool stats as there was no yarn in at all in January. Hooray! I say hooray because it's good for the stats but it does mean I haven't had any of those little dopamine hits you get when a parcel full of lovely yarn arrives through the post. On the other hand it's quite  a big dopamine hit when you get a good overall destash number for the month, so I suppose it's swings and roundabouts really. 

Wool out, which was  a combination of using up, throwing useless bits away, selling, and swapping for books came to a grand total of 2117g which is obviously the net reduction for the month/year to date. I was very pleased. 

And here are some recently completed projects

The scraptastic cowl made from the Layfamilyyarn week 1 advent. I have enough yarn left to make a pair of fingerless mitts to go with this, one of these days. 

Some socks I made for son no 2 as a last minute Christmas present. 

Fingerless mitts which were from week 3 of the Layfamily advent. This is the pattern I decided on when the pattern included with the yarn proved far too big. They are wonderfully cosy. It was a feature of the advent that three of the weekly parcels included fluff - you had the choice of kid mohair or suri alpaca and I opted for the alpaca - to hold double with the 4 ply. I'd never done that before, don't know that I'd be wild about it in a sweater although people do do that I know, but it does make for toasty necks, hands and in due course heads. 

A friend sent me this pattern and yarn for Christmas. Again the mitts turned out wildly too big for me but luckily they were a good fit for the OH and he loves them. 

I'm aware this doesn't look too impressive for two months work. However I have done lots of granny squares for the |Woolly Hugs charity that I won't photograph and post about until I've done all the ones I plan for now. There was also the Van Gogh advent blanket which I allowed to have a post all of it's own. So not bad going really. 

Even More Exciting News!

UPDATE! - we do have a photo

We've bought a new house. Or more accurately we've had an offer accepted on a house in Alloa, near Stirling and now we cross our fingers that nothing goes awry during the legal bits of the selling and buying process. 

Now we're into the nitty gritty of getting quotes for removals and clearing out, packing, letting people know etc. I daresay it will be stressful but all worth it in the end, and if we go at it calmly and logically ....

We have no photos as we didn't take any, not knowing that we were going to offer on the house when we first walked through the front door. They will come after we move, It's a nine year old 4 bed detached with a manageable sized garden, a bit of green space next to it for the cat, a utility room (! my own particular top of wish list space) and kitchens and bathroom that do not need anything doing to them. This makes a wonderful change. 

It's looking a bit unloved just now because it's been empty; one of the couple who owned it died and the other had to go into a residential home and the few pieces of furniture that were left in there made the place look  a bit forlorn. But I'm sure it won't take us long to turn it from a house into a home. 

Exciting News!

 

This is the chair on which I keep my ironing pile. It is empty. My ironing is up to date. This does not happen all that often, so it is worth recording. 

Actually it probably isn't, and thinking about it my ironing being up to date probably happens a lot more often than it used to, but I wanted a photograph and I didn't have one to illustrate the really exciting news which is that we have agreed a sale on our house. Since we had resigned ourselves to nothing happening on that front before spring we are more than delighted that a buyer popped up just after the new year. 

Tomorrow we travel south to spend a few days house hunting so there won't be another blog post here until after we are back; we return on Monday . Typically there were lots of houses on the market in the area we are looking in,  in the autumn and currently there is very little; but we'll look at what there is and it will help give us a feel for the market if nothing else. Wish us luck! 

Reading Challenge Update 3 - 9

 

Well I've read nine books so far this year and so far only reported on the first two so here are the rest. 

I listened to two of Josephine Tey's Inspector Grant novels; A Shilling for Candles and The Franchise Affair. I used to have most of Tey's novels in paperback but the vast majority of them have been culled over time, so I was thrilled to see that Audible did all six of those that feature Grant in a single collection. (Shame they don't do the same for Allingham's Campion books, but hey-ho! they don't.) These do reflect some of the attitudes of their time, so bits don't sit well, but that doesn't really spoil the enjoyment of the books which are well plotted and well written. 

Then there was Starling House by Alixe Harrow, which was the Waterstones October Sci-Fi/Fantasy book of the month. I didn't think I would enjoy this at all, especially as I didn't initially take to the female narrator but actually once I got into it I really enjoyed it. Sort of Southern Gothic. Two huge plus points, no humans having sex with fairies and no dragons  in sight. Not for everyone but I found it a good read. I originally wrote 'fun' read, but it's not really fun! but it is original and interesting and there's a very definite sense of menace skilfully achieved by the writer at various points. 

Next up was Never Somewhere Else by Alex Gray,the first of her Glasgow set police procedurals. This was passed on to me by a friend and I realised quite quickly that I had in fact read it before but as I couldn't remember all the details I read it again. Competently written  and well plotted;  perhaps that sounds a bit dismissive but its not meant to be. The series is worth a look if you haven't tried it before. 

I seem to have managed to document my trip to Saturday Slaughters without actually mentioning the book we read for it, presumably so that I could include it in a 'book post' like this one. It was The Holiday by T M Logan. Definitely not my usual sort of pick; four women who have been friends for decades spend a holiday in a villa in the south of France complete with husbands and generally annoying children ( recipe for disaster even outwith the covers of a crime novel I'd have thought!). Lightweight holiday reading although there was a good sense of atmosphere and the (male) writer does female characters well, although it seems like he couldn't be bothered with the male ones so much. It passed the time and I finished it, and as previously mentioned the plotting is very good until the very end.

I saw on the Internet somewhere that Ann Cleeves, who had vowed not to write any more books featuring Jimmy Perez, her Shetland based detective, is in fact now writing a new book about him set in Orkney and as I suspect I will succumb to curiosity and read it when it comes out I looked out my copy of the last Shetland Perez book Wild Fire, which I have on my tablet and re-read that, just to get myself back up to speed. 

And finally there was The Boleyn Inheritance by Phillipa Gregory. I claimed this on a 'does anyone want this' thread in a ravelry group, along with a few others, and again after I had opened it I realised I had read it before. That said, I think I probably got more out of this re-read than I did my original go at it, which must have been some years ago. Gregory is a bit of an on-off writer for me. I sometimes get the impression she's phoning the stuff in; not that she hasn't done her research but perhaps that the research is her favourite bit and she gets a bit bored having to make fiction out of it. Not the case with my favourite of her books The Other Boleyn Girl, and although this one isn't quite that good, not this one either. She paints a terrifying picture of a vain unfettered and ruthless monarch coming to realise exactly how far he can go, and equally a compelling portrait of how none of the women close to him could ever feel safe. The school history version of Henry deciding to divorce Ann of Cleeves so that he could marry pretty little Catherine Howard never tells us how close Ann came to being accused of treason and/or witchcraft, or how the powerful Howard family manipulated both Catherine and Henry  to get them married. The story of Ann is particularly unsettling; she seems to have been a very lucky woman to have escaped with her life. 

All enjoyable reads to one extent or another, if a trifle lightweight. Possibly I'll be tackling some books which take a bit more time and care over the next few weeks. 

A Visit to the Dentist - and how I saved myself £89

About 10 days ago I discovered what I thought was  a bad crack in one of my upper teeth parallel to my gum line. I tried very hard not to stick my tongue into it, as you do, and arranged to go and see the dentist.

In common with most people I don't like going to the dentists even for a check up, and I was rather afraid I was going to end up being drilled and filled this morning. I had mentally written off the rest of the day for reading and other gentle pursuits while I waited for the novocaine or whatever to wear off. I was quite looking forward to that. 

But I was thwarted! Only in a good way though. According to my dentist it is not a cracked tooth it is simply bad gum recession and if it is not hurting, which it isn't thank goodness, the best thing is to leave it alone and be very gentle when brushing or flossing in that area. I was in the dreaded chair for about two minutes. This is a good thing really although it did mean we had got up earlier than normal and had to drive all the way into Kirkwall for nothing but reassurance.That said the reassurance was almost priceless. 

Of course as I wasn't having to do the 'keep warm and quiet until the pain goes away and your mouth returns to normal' thing I didn't feel right to just curl up in front of the fire with a book although I did do some of that. Couldn't justify the whole rest of the day at it though. Not that I've done much else but we did go out for a very cold walk after lunch. 

When we got back I was all ready to go and order one of their new backpacks from Yoshi as I have been eyeing them longingly since they were introduced relatively recently. I'm always saying I could do with a backpack for walks and stuff and today was the day I decided I was going to stop havering and actually buy myself one. But I didn't. Because I checked the size they are -yes, I actually went and hunted out a tape measure and had a good look, and basically they are not backpacks at all, just handbag sized bags with straps so you can wear them on your back. No good at all. So that's one piece of happy mail that won't be arriving. A bit disappointing - but on the upside, I saved myself the money.  

A Very Nice Weekend

Nothing out of the ordinary, just pottering about doing the usual sort of things but the weather had cheered up and we enjoyed ourselves. 

I'd decided to take off my uber-critical hat and start going back to Saturday Slaughters until we get moved so I'd found out what the book for this month was and managed to read it in two days. That's not me being a super speedy reader, it was an easy read. 

We decided to go to Celina Rupp's for lunch ( officially it's the Barrier View Cafe, because, surprise surprise you can see the first Churchill barrier from the windows, but we always call it Celina Rupp's because it's part of Celina's jewellery place.) Voila

Not the most exciting, but we didn't have to make it ourselves or put the dishes in the dishwasher and it made a change. We were going to have coffee and cake afterwards but decided against because we didn't have a huge amount of time and there wasn't much that caught our eye in the cake line.We had a brief bimble around her jewellery gallery on the way out and saw a rather nice new design....

Then it was on into town, and the library for me and the supermarket for the OH via the charity shop which we give our stuff to these days. It's  one where you can usually park right outside and where they greet you with a smile and a 'thank you so much' rather than a barked and oft repeated hope that 'there aren't any electrical goods in there' despite you repeatedly assuring them that there aren't. And that was after a previous visit when we were ignored until I stage whispered to the OH 'this is rather rude' at which point the person on duty managed to drag his eyes from whatever it was he had previously found so engrossing and acknowledge our existence. When I recounted the electrical goods interrogation here previously I don't think I said, but it was the Kirkwall Salvation Army Shop. A place which, for understandable reasons, we no longer trouble with our presence - or our donations. 

Saturday Slaughters was fine and I managed to keep my uber critical hat off, although I was a bit irritated when I did point out a small inconsistency in what was otherwise a well constructed plot and an American lady opposite me drawled with a supercilious curl of her lip that  'this was fiction'. Well yes, but if that's your answer to everything why bother discussing a book at all? I will mention the book in my reading  round up which is still up-coming, I promise. 

After SS we took ourselves off to The Daily Scoop, to make up for there not being  much choice of cake at Celina's. There wasn't much choice at the Daily Scoop either unless you like to choose between about 10 varieties of tray bake, but I'm trying to keep my chocolate consumption down to a minimum just now so I had a Danish Slice which was a cinnamon bun by another name but with rather more icing than any Scandinavian would think appropriate. The OH had an ice cream sundae and I forgot to take photos. There again, when did taking photos of food become a thing? Maybe we'll do it again after the next SS meeting in a months time. If we're here and not house hunting in the Central Belt at the time.  The Daily Scoop's ice creams are not a patch on those you get at Geris Ice Cream parlour but the advantage the DS has over Geri is that it's open all year. 

On Sunday the weather was really nice and we went for a walk in just sweaters and no coats. We did one of our favourite walks from when lockdown was easing which is at Burwick, waaay down south , in Orkney terms.  We thought we might see seals as Burwick is generally good for that, but we didn't.  We did however see lots of gulls bobbing about, some beautiful cloud formations and plenty of sunshine. 

A jigsaw, and an Unexpected Present.

Things have been a bit slow on the jigsaw front recently, not least because of needing the dining room table over Christmas, but my sister bought me a new puzzle for Christmas and I finished it yesterday. It took a while but that was mainly because I only allow myself half an hour a day on puzzles so it can be slow work. Anyway the image on this one is an appropriate one! 

And last week postie brought these, an unexpected gift from the OH 

My sister has raved about Icelandic licorice for ages; she has bought lots of it in the past when she has visited  Iceland but had never found a source for it in the UK. Last autumn the OH started getting adverts on his Facebook feed for Lakrids Bulow, which is not Icelandic but a Danish firm which makes licorice  'in the Icelandic way'. 

We havered about getting some for my sister for Christmas because of it not being made in Iceland, but then when we went south in November we saw a box at Tebay so we took a chance and bought it. I think it wold be fair to say she was very pleased with it. Unbeknownst to me the OH then ordered some for me as a present to open on Christmas morning and I discovered that I too have  a taste for Icelandic licorice. The box I got for Christmas was soon gone - it's very more-ish. Anyway last week totally out of the blue - for me, not him of course - these two jars arrived for me, a propos of nothing except he thought I'd enjoy them. Plus I think he signed up and gets loyalty points or an introductory offer or something. All the more generous of him though since he doesn't like licorice at all! 

Worth A Post All Of It's Own

These days I generally post pictures of my crafty endeavours on a monthly basis to tie in with the stash stats and I'll be sticking to that throughout the year as otherwise things tend to get forgotten, but here's something that's worth celebrating with a post all to itself. 

This is the lap blanket I made with the yarn advent from The Yarn Artist that the OH bought me for Christmas. I was really pleased that I more or less managed to keep to knitting the one square a day; it slipped  a bit towards the end as I was trying to get a pair of Christmas socks done for Son No 2. However they were all knitted up by 31st and then I havered a bit about the border as I wasn't sure what to do. In the end  I made a magic knot ball with all the little bits left over from the squares, dug out some undyed DK that I'd got from the YA earlier and combined them in a simple striped garter stitch border which I think works very well.  Sadly the colour is a bit blown out on the photo; it was difficult to find somewhere to tkae it that had enough space to lay it out and wasn't too dark to take a picture. 

Quite proud of this one. 

Back to Normal-ish, and some holiday TV

Son No 2 flew back to Glasgow yesterday - 3 hour delay on departure for a 40 minute-ish flight, thank you Loganair, or possibly the weather. Anyway just the OH and I, plus of course the cat and Visiting Cat in the house now.

I feel like I'm living in a grammar lesson that's concentrating on the flexibility of tenses in English; it has snowed, it has been snowing, it did snow; it snows, it is snowing and according to the weather forecast it will be snowing, it will snow, it will have snowed for several days to come. The sun was shining this morning and I was almost suckered into suggesting we bundle up in warm coats and woolly accessories and go for a short walk. Two minutes later the white stuff started falling from the sky again, so I was glad I hadn't got around to that after all. 

Snuggling up is all very well but as I have said before, it doesn't make for much interest on the blog. I have read, I have watched some TV , I have knitted and crocheted and I have moaned about the cold.  

As far as TV goes, I don't  know why we wasted so much money on the Christmas Edition of the Radio Times  because it was full of articles about  programs that we were never going to watch and after looking at about two days worth of the listings I felt totally overwhelmed and generally relied on my on-screen guide. I may have missed some absolute gems of programs but hey-ho! that's not end-of the world stuff. Judging by what I did seem it's also  doubtful in the extreme. 

So what did we watch? Outnumbered which contained one of my favourite Christmas watching moments when Karen told her mother's needy friend Jane to butt out of their lives (hooray for Karen). All the Only Connect specials that were on.  A sort of  spin off of Death in Paradise, whose name escapes me but which is set in a small coastal town in Queensland. I gave that a go because - well Australia and stayed with it because it was funny. Son No 2 and I streamed a couple of episodes of Colin from Accounts ( also because Oz) and enjoyed what we saw but somehow never went back after the first day. A Sydney-set detective series called North Shore started on ITV? Channel 4? last week and we streamed the rest of the series over 3 nights after watching episode 1 when it was first screened. Definitely a bit of a (favourite country) theme developing there. Other than that we took ourselves off to You Tube and binge watched three series of the old BBC kids adventure game Raven. (Son no 2 commented, after a stream of passive aggressive comments on the kids performances in some of the challenges from the presenter/guide Raven, that the show was 'rather more mean spirited than he remembered'. Also on YouTube we treated ourselves to a re-watch of A Christmas Carol Gone Wrong, which like all the Gone Wrong stable was hilarious. 

TV, like the rest of life is now returning to pre-festive season normality which is good news for me in that it brings us new series of Kirsty and Phil's Love it or List It and The Great Pottery Throw Down. And a new detective series set in York started last evening which looks promising, even if some of it sounded a bit like Autism Awareness Week at times. 

I was going to do an update on the reading challenge as well today, but given the relatively slow pace of life just now I'll hoard that for another day! 

Well, we weren't expecting that!

So, yesterday we went off to the local Leisure centre where the cinema is, to see The War of the Rohirrim. Son no.2 was keen and was sure he would enjoy it, the OH thought he wouldn't, and I knew I wouldn't because it is a cartoon - sorry - anime, and as anyone who has been here for longer than five minutes is aware, I loathe cartoons. I particularly loathe anime ones because everyone has a very pointy chin and a strange upturned little nose -  and after yesterday I can add that all the horses are basically square. 

Actually we all quite enjoyed it. perhaps going into things with very low expectations is the key? The plot was derivative and had holes you could have ridden a cavalry regiment through, and as with anything Peter Jackson has even a remote connection with, it was a bit too long. But only a bit, it wasn't a three hour indulgence fest. Some of the detail in the background drawing was really beautiful and the soundtrack was fine, if a bit insistent. 

About 10 minutes from the end the fire alarm went off and we had to troop out and stand on the front steps in the freezing  cold. I should add that the cinema itself was quite cold anyway but it was much, much worse outside. The OH was all for abandoning the film and going off to Tesco's to do the big shop but I wanted to see how it ended and I didn't think it was going to take them long to establish that there actually wasn't a fire and let us all back in. It didn't,  we went back and saw the end, which was satisfying and, again rather oddly for a PJ film, didn't hold out the certainty of an equally long  follow up, so I was glad I had stuck to my guns for once and insisted we stay. 

Of course we still had to do the big shop afterwards, but at least we weren't left doomed forever to wonder what had happened to Hera, daughter of Helm. 

We actually got out for a walk today, the first time we've been able to do that - well, all the Christmas break really. We've popped out for stuff, like the Post Office and the occasional bottle of milk but otherwise it's all been about  staying in and snuggling up, which generally I'm all for but it hasn't made for much interesting to write about. 

Life should get back to almost normal tomorrow though, and even more so after Wednesday when Son No 2 returns to the Big City.  

Reading Challenge 2

 

It snowed yesterday , not just showers where the snow  disappeared almost as soon as it hit the ground but real proper snow that lay. (In fact there is still some lying now a day later). It was also bitterly cold, so definitely a staying in day. I spent the morning doing various boring chores, and in the afternoon curled up in front of the fire and read the Margery Allingham book that I bought recently.

I really enjoyed it. It takes the form of several essays, several by Kate Davies herself but others by various experts on Allingham, social history, cultural history etc. Lots of wonderful photographs included too. I especially enjoyed the two on the social and cultural effects of WW2 .

There are 11 patterns included in the book, many of which look 'extremely interesting' to knit, which is code for, they have an unusual construction which I probably couldn't manage and the finished article would be no good for anyone with a less than model girl figure. So I doubt I will knit any of them, but never say never.  

We Went To The Pictures

 Not sure if anyone still calls it 'The Pictures' these days, but anyway, we went to the cinema. After Christmas but before New Year.

The film we went to see was Wicked. No-one more surprised than us, really, but we knew someone who had been to see it four times and loved it - obviously. So we thought we would give it a go.  

We did not love it. We will not be going to see it again nor will  we  be going to see Part 2. I was amazed that the film itself only covered Act 1 of the stage show, but I suppose if Peter Jackson can make 3, 3hour films of The Hobbit which is a single, and quite short!, book, then someone can make a two film version of a two act stage show. It's all about the money. 

I have never read any of the Oz books, although I have sat through the film version of the first one. This was a little help to me  in understanding what was going on in Wicked, although the talking animal storyline lost me.

Anyway, chalked up to experience, and undeterred we are back off to the cinema again tomorrow. I suspect it will be another film we regret spending money on, but we'll see. 

2025 Reading Challenge

I know, why do I do this to myself? I have no idea really. No sooner have I ditched the poster ( well OK, that was a while back ) then I get caught up in another reading challenge. 

I saw this article in The Guardian on-line by someone who had decided last January that she needed to read more and doom scroll less and so she set herself the challenge of finding the time to read a book a week. 52 weeks, 52 books.  

What a good idea, I thought. I should make time to read more, I used to do so much more of it. Let's give this a go. So I am. 

There is an official Agatha Christie entity of some description, run by the Agatha Christie estate, and every year they pose a challenge to read one Agatha Christie book a month, based around a theme for the year. I've been aware of it for some time, but never joined in, but this year I have, because it will get me off to a flying start for my book a week thing. The theme this year is Characters and Careers and for January the career was artist and the suggested book was Five Little Pigs. This has always been a bit of a favourite of mine* so I bought it on Kindle and finished it last night. They don't take  a lot of reading really and I enjoyed it despite knowing the end. 

* yes, even before ITV dramatised it and cast Toby Stephens in a major role

So, 1 down and 51 to go. 

Happy New Year

 

So how's that for a cheerful start to the New Year? To be fair, it's only showers and it's not lying, but if I had made a new year's resolution to walk every day, that it would be it, busted, on day 1. 

Talking of resolutions I have not made any because it's just a fast road to disillusion with self and life in general, although I did hear someone say yesterday that she always kept one of her new year's resolutions all year. Since this is to not eat broad beans which  she hates, it's an easy one to keep. 

I have though got a few general goals. Read more, craft more, listen to music more, take better care of myself. Procrastinate less and scroll on my phone less; those two are not unrelated!

There are things to hope for and to look forward to in 2025. A house move, a couple of good holidays, a visit from our grandsons in the summer - we'll see how the year pans out. 

It will I hope go well for me, and also for everyone who visits me here, whether that's on a regular basis or the occasional 'pop in'. Here's to the next twelve months!