This is another crafty update, well it is that time of year, weather and health has meant I have been indoors more than intended. Feel annoyed with my lungs that I missed attending reading group on Monday morning and a knitting group in the afternoon but just wasn't well enough to go.

A few weeks back I had a check up with the Practice Nurse, I have bronchiectasis so am monitored carefully, the lung function test result on that day was a bit alarming, it had dropped to 28%, this along with Ian suffering with tinnitus made us decide to sort out our Powers of Attorney. Last Tuesday we trotted along to the family solicitors. Really are family solicitors, both my grandparents and their descendents used the same firm in the same premises. We look on PoAs like wills, once registered we can forget all about them, hope they are never needed, we're the invincible baby boomer generation, so much to learn and do yet.

 As we walked - in the rain - from the car park we passed one of the bookshops and I spotted a crochet book in the window, there wasn't time to buy so Ian asked the bookseller to put it aside for our return. Book is A little course in crochet: simply everything you need to succeed, published by Dorling Kindersley so clear illustrations and layout, plus a good index with a name check for the Indexer.

The cushion cover I am crocheting is growing very quickly, work has grown more since this picture was taken.

Our cushion collection is growing, we went into the Princess Alice hospice charity shop looking for Royal Doulton Tapestry china, we would like to have more pudding/cereal bowls, instead we found these three brand new cushions on a shelf at the back of the shop as if they were nothing. The pads inside were labelled Laura Ashley, assume the covers were the same brand.

 So underpriced at £4.50 each, they lighten up our red sofa, also lovely and squishy to lean on. A complete design contrast from another set of cushions we bought recently through Not on the High Street website.

In case anyone was wondering, the hexipuff total has reached 339, time to go downstairs to start another, target is 384.

Crafty update

Just an update on the hexipuff front and the crochet cushion cover. I am working on the 333rd hexipuff, but as a change whilst home have continued with the half treble crochet. More colours of Big Wool were purchased last Saturday on a visit to JL in Kingston so as of yesterday

this is the work in progress. Doesn't look as big and garish here, it is for a cushion pad 40 x 40cm so a fair bit to do yet but it grows very quickly, each colour is a single row of crochet.

For even more encouragement if it were needed, Ian returned yesterday with Simple Crochet: hooked on handmade, so many lovely items to make for our home. How will time be found, along with knitting, family history, socialising, volunteering at Local Studies, sorting out the boxes of pre-digital photographs dating back 30 years. Amazed to find I have even kept those bad photos that returned from the developer with a little sticker identifying an error. The ones of local scenes, like Whitton carnival will be labelled and given to Local Studies for their collection. All part of our decluttering.

This week

The weather ...  cold, rain and so grey. When out and about recently I was struck how most winter coats appear to be black, navy or grey, few bright colours and my mind goes back to the Kaffe Fassett exhibition which exploded with colour.

I am wearing ... pale blue polo neck cashmere and wool jumper, Gabrielle pattern cardigan I knitted and navy blue trousers

I am reading ... The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes, this is for reading group, my bedside book is Jim Pym's Listening to the Light. In between I have been dipping into Life below stairs, in the Victorian & Edwardian country house. It's a National Trust book, bought for £5.00 from local library authorities online sales. The book cost £20.00 in 2011, was borrowed twice in that year, once the following year, I suspect it would have been cheaper to have bought 3 copies from Amazon and given them to the borrowers! The book was held in one of the many small branch libraries, surely the days of a small library within a mile of each borrower has to go, a London borough should have say three good size libraries  so eleven copies of a popular book are not bought for each tiny branch. I am thinking multiple copies of biographies of the latest star, especially those barely into their twenties.

I am creating ... hexipuffs, I am working on the 330th, so 50 or so to go. As a change I'm crocheting a cushion cover using half trebles, size 5 hook and Rowan big wool in various colours. Not as portable as hexipuffs but something fast growing to pick up at odd moments.

I am listening ... to the clunk and whirl of my laptop, the Toshiba will be seven years old at the end of May, I am being persuaded that an update may be a good idea. Words like Apple and Mac have been heard.

I am watching ... the Design programme on BBC2, yes another lifestyle competition, but these programmes give information too, both about the properties, their history, about design, for example where raised panels are not placed equally between dado rail and skirting board but using a golden ratio. For once thirties properties were not decried but their advantages explored for modern living.

I am enjoying ... the dreams of visiting more National Trust properties this year, reinforced by the arrival of this year's NT handbook.

From the learning rooms ... one thing I have learnt is is an electrical appliance is making a noise or buzzing as one of our standard lamps did, the answer is to turn it off then back on again. Thought that rule was just for computers.

On the menu ... I'm not good at planning ahead for meals, although today did make two cottage pies, one has been eaten and the other is  for daughter and her young man tomorrow evening. Planning needed urgently for weekend meals

On the calendar ...next week is Local History Society - I think talk is about local Suffragettes;  I shall be going to U3A knitting group, taking with me some patterns for toe up socks, the start of which uses the same process as the start of hexipuffs. Maybe when hexipuffs are finished I will try toe up socks, I gather it is easier to fit as you go.

More garden changes

To keep my readers up to date with the garden saga at Pixie Towers, this is to record last week's changes to the back garden. Briefly, the high winds at the beginning of the year damaged the fencing so all of ours has been replaced. The left hand side is not our fence so it continues to lean and wobble, we did tell the owner about our plans but the letter was ignored. Kingston Garden Services who tidied the garden at the back end of last year carried out the work, our next project is to replace the green moss and weeds known as the lawn.

then the result, after much problems with some areas being rather waterlogged, the water table was very near the surface.  I was a bit surprised, according to the Ordnance Survey map we are on a contour line so higher up. Joking of course, even though we are on gravel there is a limit to how much water can be drained away, but it made it difficult for the guys to concrete the posts in along the back of the garden.

Not only was fencing replaced but at the same time the guys cleared and tidied the garden too even though that wasn't in the specification.

New term

We are gradually starting to find a routine for 2014, back this week to the fortnightly term time U3A knitting group, am now working just on the hexipuffs. The red lace wrap has been put on one side, I have to undo it as I have one extra stitch on the needle so the pattern could go wrong, haven't made enough to see how it works, nor can I spot an error. Have completed 317, my aim is to complete 384 to join together to make a 3 x 4 foot quilt before the end of this new year. Off to another knitting group on Monday so more hexipuff knitting, problem is there is a meeting of the Reading Group earlier in the day, haven't read anywhere near all of "Winter in Madrid", C. J. Samsom's book. Doesn't really grab me, bit depressing, and I need to mug up on my Spanish history too.

Talking of knitting, in an obituary in yesterday's Telegraph of an agricultural historian , Joan Thirsk [who] united her own interest in knitting with her rural studies, challenging the notion that knitting did not develop until the 16th century by pointing out that the chain mail of medieval armour was “in fact, a knitted garter stitch”. ..      She combined scholarship with a love of domesticity, often treating her students and colleagues to bread and cakes she had baked herself, and sending hand-knitted garments for their newly-born offspring. 

Not often one sees detail about knitting and knitters in an serious obituary, it connects with the discussions about domestic chores such as ironing, crafts like knitting and crochet which are seen as beneath professional and academic women, on the contrary most of the women who post in Ravelry appear to be very clever and articulate. Many run successful businesses from home, dyeing yarn, designing patterns most of which appear to require great mathematical skills to create.

In spite of Ian's third level course being just 30 points towards his degree it appears to require as much study as a 60 point course, doesn't help when an errata is issued whilst one is working on an assignment. Ian had planned to stop at a diploma last summer but then he passed both his exam and the course he took when he stayed a week in Nottingham University so he has decided to press on for the degree. So I have attempted to assist, no not with sums, but other activities like cooking so made supper last night, a cauliflower and celery soup with cheese for lunch today. A shortage of yogurt after Christmas, especially in  large pots, led me to resurrect our yogurt maker. Overnight two pints of blue top milk became a litre of fairly thick yogurt thus:-

Little things mean so much ....

A while back in our local, independent stationers I bought a bag of tiny white labels to tie round circular knitting needles where the size has worn off. The labels are a little larger than from top of thumb nail to joint.

Like many households we have plenty of cables for all our electrical toys, so much so that it is becoming quite confusing, especially where Father Christmas has added more to the pile so I have found another use for these labels. Each cable has a label, even if it is obvious that it fits an iPad or iPhone.

Another pleasing event is that the German clock, brought back from Hamburg around turn of the twentieth century by my maternal grandfather seems to have sorted itself out. It kept stopping, went to our local repairers where it kept going on the wall, it was returned with no charge as they hadn't done anything but for some time it still kept stopping when here. Now,since just before Christmas we seem to have cracked it, don't know what we did, or didn't do, I'm so pleased to hear the gentle ticking and chimes in our dining room. Even better when both our chiming clocks do so simultaneously.

Third little thing is one of my Christmas gifts are LED clip-on glasses lights, bought in Tiger for me to use whilst knitting in poor light but proving much more useful than knitting. For example if I'm typing on my laptop don't need to put lights on, as a touch typist just require to check numerals and symbols as keyboards vary. There is a clip to attach to the arm of specs so the light is facing forward in same direction as lenses.

Doesn't take much to please me.

At the turn of the year

These days after Christmas celebrations and before the new year have an odd feeling about them, neither holiday or work day, there appears little traffic in our suburban street, certainly few of the regular Park-and-Ride commuter cars are around; our offspring, Daughter in Law and Outlaw Son all are working. (Daughter phoned in her lunch break, she was surprised how busy she had been today, unexpectedly so). Radio and TV schedules change, news bulletins are shortened, often it is one film after another, or compilations of past programmes or events jumbled together.

In my twenties I often worked, it was easy for me, I was single, living at home whereas other staff would want to go up country to their families. Before New Year's Day was a public holiday, the London Gazette containing the New Year Honours had to be distributed amongst the top people. When I think back to the shelves of bound volumes of the London Gazette, the piles of copies waiting to be bound and how rarely they were consulted the world of the Internet seems so green. The library had bound volumes of The Times too, even though by then it was available on microfilm. I remember asking the Chief Librarian why we didn't have microfilm copies and he boomed at me "We can't ask Lord Mountbatten to look at a microfilm"! Presumably had Mountbatten asked to see an issue of the Thunderer a librarian would have had to carry the volumes to him, as far as I know it never happened. Thankfully, even then I could hardly lift them.

One of my many Christmas gifts was a new spiral bound note book, all very girly and pink which is me (I hope), said notebook is to be used to help me structure all this free time I have but can waste. So, at the back I have a page headed up Blog ideas, have remembered to date it and write on the top line Even with lists I try to date everything, cannot remember who or where this was installed into me. Blog ideas all seem very positive and relating to the season so I shall include these ideas and thoughts. When asked if we had a good Christmas I answer very positively yes, because we feel this year the gifts we gave were a surprise and a success, I love giving pleasure and happiness to family and friends, I worry about finding the 'right' gift to match the person.

Christmas Day was family, this year our turn to spend the day with our adult children and other halves at my cousins, a traditional time when the only TV programme watched was the Queen's Speech, instead games included a beetle drive with coloured plastic beetle parts and a 1930s game - Plus and Minus. I remember my father talking about this, cousin must have inherited the family set,

Lots of adding up, taking away and laughter from the youngsters.

Boxing Day found us, with daughter and her young man in Richmond, walking past a very fast flowing River Thames before managing to climb through the Terrace Gardens to take in the View, the only one legally protected. Quite cold weather, no cows in Petersham Meadows, the mist there was quite noticeable. The Terrace Gardens is another one of the places that has been part of my life for ever. I took my first photos here, with my Kodak Brownie 127, I was about 10 or 11 and have enjoyed snapping ever since.

As I have organised my Blog Ideas I shall close this, maybe read more of book given me by my daughter, Listening to the Light: how to bring Quaker simplicity and integrity into our lives by Jim Pym. So appropriate, especially after attending the Quaker funeral and Memorial Meeting for my cousin this year. Also need to move on Winter in Madrid by C. J. Sansom for reading group, this book is not holding my interest at all.