31 December: Thaw

It's been warmer (well OK, less cold) for a few days, so the snow and ice are slowly melting. The pavements are less icy today than yesterday, although the ice that remains is dirty and oily, so they still need care!

Anyway, we were able to get out for a proper walk today, rather than just round the block, and feel much better for the fresh air and exercise. Along the old railway line was a small flock of goldfinches, chaffinches and tits, the little birds darting in and out of the trees and bushes. In a crop field on one side were a whole lot of thrush look-alikes that we think were probably fieldfares, though getting the camera out unfortunately frightened them away.

All the ditches were full, and water ran along the lane. A boggy bit of wood pasture at the bottom of one field has a ditch more like a stream.


Still some scraps of snow under the trees further away.

24 December: Cactus

On the kitchen window sill is is a Christmas cactus -


Probably not really a cactus, and doesn't often flower at Christmas. But this year...

21 December: Bored

So I thought I'd change some colours. Spring ones are good. There might be more changes. Will anyone notice?

20 December: Cold

Round here the temperature has barely crept above zero for days. This morning the thermometer in the conservatory (unheated since last winter) showed just above zero, when it has been hovering at 4 or 5 degrees. The windows were pretty, though -


Fortunately I have just finished a lap blanket which has been in progress for a couple of months.


The grey Shetland is handspun from a fleece bought at Woolfest, and the coloured squares (because there wasn't quite enough grey) are knitted from handspun Shetland yarn, home-dyed, from the stash.

Another cold-beating item is this cowl or neckwarmer knitted from some handspun merino. The drop-stitch pattern makes it stretchy and extra warm.

15 December: Ice wave

The snow and ice are gradually melting away (except on the pavements locally).

The heap of snow in our back garden is making some strange shapes as it thaws. This one is rather interesting -

11 December: Recent knitting and a small success

The snow has meant we haven't been getting out much. So a fair amount of knitting has been done. A couple of larger projects are still in progress, but here are some small finished items -


This is a scarflet (short scarf), knitted as a tube, in one-row helical stripes, with the ends closed to make it double thickness. Handspun BFL - super soft and silky.

And 2 sideways short-row hats knitted from the recent batches of spinning and dyeing -


Nice texture, soft yarn, and lovely mixed colours. The plainer green one was done first, but if one colour's good, then 2 are better, so a quarter of the second hat is done in a yarn with colour in common with the larger yellow section.

And, finally - last Sunday's 18M FITA archery competition gave me a winning gold medal -


Not exactly a huge victory, though; I was the only archer shooting bare-bow. And that's the bow that's bare, NOT the archer!

6 December: Silver (well, more skewbald*) surfers

My brain hurts.

My Dear Husband has got a new laptop, and we have been learning lots about transferring files and applications. And there's a lot to learn about asking the right question - tricky when you only have a vague idea of what you want to do, and not the correct words for it in computer-speak.

Although we have a big fat instruction book about the OS, it is still very difficult to find the bit that refers to the problem you are trying to solve. And of course, there's the side-tracking; like the hour or so spent trying to find out why the book refers to, and illustrates, a mailbox called "Junk", and there isn't one on our computer. And, apparently, no way of finding out why.

He's got the laptop connected to the Internet OK, but there's still the problem of how to use it to access the e-mails that are on the desktop computer.

Anyway, in the end we got the Family History programme onto the laptop, along with the file of his FamHist. And I managed to retrieve several weeks' worth of work on my own FamHist file from the Trash .....


(*one grey head, one brown.)