Gordon Bennett - bunches!

Last week sometime I took the plunge and trimmed my own fringe. I was very cautious and reasonably successful and I will do it again if I have to. What I cannot contemplate doing is cutting the rest of my hair; or letting the OH loose on it. But when we go out for walks, or I do my streamed exercise class (with Scottish ballet, Mon-Fri, get me! ) I do find it whips about a bit and blows in my eyes and round my face and generally gets very annoying. So earlier this week I gave in to the inevitable, dug out some elastics, tried a ponytail for which it is still too short and put my hair in bunches. There is even photographic proof.

I last wore my hair like this at school and, despite the fact that they look quite titchy and cute I am well aware that I am decades too old for this! 

My hair is sadly two-tone, and will need seeing to as soon as I can get an appointment with the hairdresser when we are finally allowed out and up close again. If that glad day ever dawns.

Meanwhile, a bit further up the hill we came across these two

Such lovely cheerful piggies. They did make us smile. 

Box Sets - Are you over them?

I've seen various references in the press and on social media to people complaining that they are 'totally over the box set thing', which I take to mean they have now watched all the box sets of programs which appeal to them and are now rather mardy about having 'nothing to do'. I may  be wrong, they may just have got fed up with sitting on the couch and are now looking for something else to do. Which, given how long we have been in lock down, would not be surprising. 

But what I want to know is - where have they found the time? In all these weeks I have managed to watch just one 'box set', and that wasn't streaming a multi season show, it was watching  DVDs of a thing called Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. This was made in 2006 and ran for one season only, so 22 episodes in total. It was created by Aaron Sorkin of The West Wing fame and starred Matthew Perry and Bradley Whitford. It was very very funny and I enjoyed watching it again. Since it was about a topical sketch show it has aged, but the central relationships and the wit still shone sharp and clear. I doubt if it is available to stream anywhere though. 

I suppose if the current situation goes on much longer  I might find time to learn how to stream and finally catch up with The West Wing itself, which people have been telling me for years was brilliant. Or I may just do a lot more reading. Time will tell. 

Lockdown Knitting - Small Things.

I have naturally been dong a lot of knitting in lockdown. There have been two large projects, both ongoing for different reasons and I'll maybe talk about those another day. But I find that what suits me just now is doing small things; using up wool and getting stuff finished. Here's a quick gallop round what I've made since the beginning of March.

This will go off to Knitting for Peace or the shoebox appeal at some stage. I can't believe how long I have had this wool in my stash. It came with us to Orkney in 2005, I know that much. 

The left overs were used for hats for Bonnie babies and a prem baby cannula sleeve .....

And having found some odd bits of blue cream and grey DK they became BB hats and cannula sleeves as well

I did nine of these red hats but forgot to take a picture of the other seven! It doesn't matter, as they all looked exactly the same. 

This was meant to use up some wool I bought in Australia many years ago. I'm pleased with how the hat came out, but wasn't so pleased that it only used 60% of the ball. I will have to do a smaller version to use up the rest at some stage. 

This hat and cowl set is for me and uses up some beautiful Malabrigo worsted weight sent to me by a friend in America. I am working on a pair of fingerless mitts to go with them to use up every last scrap. I never met a skein of Malabrigo yarn that I didn't like and their worsted is so soft and buttery, I love working with it. 

Random picture of one of the cats just to break it up for non-knitting readers! 

I picked up this ball of wool meaning to knit a pair of charity socks but then decided they would do for son no 1 at Christmas. Unlike his father and brother he does not like bright socks, but I decided these, even with the purple, would be sombre enough, especially as he is getting a bit Goth-y thes edays. 

This as also using up wool sent from America, and I cast it on when I needed something mindless to knit because other stuff was a bit too complex for doing in front of the TV. Again it didn't use up all the available yarn and I will do another in due course. 

And finally, for now, no prizes for guessing these were for the OH. 

There's also a baby jacket on the blocking boards, so all in all I don't think I've done so badly. 

One Stays, One Goes.

Doing jigsaw puzzles is a therapeutic thing for me. When there are too many things going on around me which I can't control then dong a jigsaw puzzle is great, because I am imposing order on chaos. Not surprising then that I've been turning to jigsaws more over the past few weeks. 

I have long thought that I should cull my collection and then impose a 'one in: one out' rule, because they are large and bulky things to store and if I don't do something I will run out of places to put them. Many of them I will never do again and so they could go either to our library, which recently established a collection of jigsaws to borrow, or to local charity shops. 

Lockdown seems a good time to make a start, and here are my two latest finished puzzles.

I finished this one in very little time yesterday. It's fun and it's staying. 

This one, on the other hand, is not fun and is not staying. When I got it out a couple of weeks ago the OH said 'You've done that one before' to which I replied 'I started it once before but gave up. This time I'm going to finish it'. (Because nothing says failure quite like being defeated by 1000 small pieces of cardboard)

And as you see I did finish it. It was a bit of a struggle and it has already gone to live in the spare room with some other things that are destined to be given away the moment life gets underway again. 

100 books to read poster Number 10

This.   Was.   Awful.

Really. Just don't go there. I lost about eight hours of my life listening to this garbage so that you wouldn't have to. What it is  doing on a 'books you should read list' I have no idea.

Tomorrow we'll aim for some positivity.

100 Books to Read Poster - Number 9

Yes, I have finally finished listening to The Help. 

I had forgotten how difficult it was to take good photos of the little pictures under the rub-off squares on the poster.  If you have read the book you'll know the relevance of the picture, and if you haven't I can't explain it because that would be a major spoiler.

I know I've made passing reference to listening to this a couple of times. It was a hard listen for three major reasons

1) There is too much time taken to  set-up the main situation, so that by the time you get to the major developments of the book you have almost lost interest in every single character who is in it. 

2) It was read by several different voices all with good southern states accents. The trouble is that's one accent that gets into my head and for days afterwards everythin' ah say or think is comin' out in a southern drawl. It's SO annoying. 

3) The subject matter is hard to take. It's astounding to me that this book is describing a situation that lasted well into my lifetime, and although I'd like to think that the hateful attitudes laid bare within it are no longer extant, I can't delude myself to that extent. 

For all that, the book is powerful, moving, shocking, and sometimes even funny. I would never ever read it again but I have to say that it was a hit rather than a miss. 

And on a more positive note ....

... here are pictures from today's walk, which was rather longer and steeper than the others we've done recently. It pleases me to reflect that a couple of years ago I couldn't have done this walk at all and today I managed it without breaking sweat. Although I did rest a couple of times on the really steep bits. 

So, a silvery sparkly sea

a fire breathing Chinese dragon in the clouds

the first bee of the year. We also saw and heard skylarks which was exciting.

Our destination, the Burray trig point. Which I suppose explains why so much of the outward leg was upwards! 

The OH ruminating on something or other - possibly on whether we were going to beat the rain back. We didn't, quite. 

A couple of northwards-ish views from the trig point. There are worse places to be in lockdown than Orkney.