20 February: The frozen North

It's been chilly here for several days. The sun has melted the overnight frost in the places it reaches, but in the shade everything is frozen solid.

After yesterday's freezing fog the garden plants were encrusted -


And as I drove into Durham mid-morning the car told me that it was still -2 degrees C. The trees and hedges were simply breathtakingly beautiful. My little camera doesn't do it justice, but this was the view across the field from our front garden -

18 February: Surprise! more knitting

Wool-o-phobes look away now!

DH is now wearing more hand-knitted socks - here's a pair of dark brown ones that I call Choc Block Socks:


The felted bag came out so well that I used some more of the itchy yarn to make another, larger one. The smaller one nests inside it when not in use.

And on Ravelry I spotted a snail knitted by this blogger, and made a similar item -


You will note the realism of the beady eyes, and of the button-off shell.

14 February: Oh, really?

The flower and plant stall in Durham had some interesting items on sale yesterday.

As well as MASCARI and CORDELINES, there were PALM'S, CROCESS, and my particular favourite, CYCLEMEN.

Ah, Marco Pantani and Miguel Indurain!

12 February: Plenty of fibre

Happy Birthday to DD, and for yesterday to DDIL!

Greens the other day, now it's fibre - you can't say blogging isn't good for the digestive system.

Some BFL has been the subject of experiment with food dyes - the stuff used for cake icing - and came out like this -


I recently met another blogger who was de-stashing and had some sock yarns from her. Some of that yarn has become these socks -

Some handspun yarn which irritates my skin has been used to make a felted project bag -


And I made that nautilus. Mottled purple seemed a likely colour, and by chance I had just bought some buttons which made good eyes.

I don't really do cute, but this is dangerously close.

7 February: 36 words and 4 pictures

The sun broke through for a while, and brightened leaves that are out early.


Some plants have flower buds -

And some flowers are open -

But best of all was seeing the leaves shine in the sun.

3 February: It's Shaun the Sheep!

There's been quite a lot of activity this week designed to divert my thoughts from the minor surgery I had on Wednesday afternoon.

There's been a cyst on my scalp for a long time, but it recently became infected. The nice GP used to be a surgeon, so he was keen to keep his hand in by removing the offending excrescence. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

So on Wednesday afternoon I spent half an hour having one of life's more unpleasant experiences, and when I'd recovered from feeling faint (the nurse even offered me a cup of tea - I must have looked pretty awful!), I put my hat on and came home to lie low, moaning gently, for a few days.

There followed attempts to keep my mind off the 4 stitches in my head. (They are bright blue - is that so that the nurse can find them again, or did the doctor do what I usually do, and just use whatever colour comes to hand?)

Last time I was in Newcastle, I spotted a pack containing yarn and instructions to knit a Shaun the Sheep, so of course I bought it. Just the right sort of dead fiddly thing to concentrate on at a time like this, and here he is -


- posing on the TV, along with DH's plush Totoro, star of Studio-Ghibli's animations.

And browsing on the Internet I found a pattern for a knitted nautilus, so I might have a go at that. Wonder what colour it ought to be?

30 January: Greens

Yesterday's occupation was dyeing some fibre and sock yarn, trying to get a good green colour.


Green is always a rather awkward colour to get right; you know, of course, that blue and yellow mixed make green, but yellows vary and so do blues. And then there's the added problem that the colour of the dye liquid isn't always quite the same as the colour the wool takes, and then again it's wet when you're doing it, and it changes a bit when it dries.

All this is waffle to explain why none of these is quite what I was after!

The best one turns out to be the bright one on the right of the picture, which horrified me when I first saw it. It's got some jade dye in it, which is very strong - only needs a small dab (that's the technical term).

The fibre was done in the microwave, but the sock yarn went in a pan on the stove. The skein seemed to be tied properly in two places, but when it was being rinsed, I realised that the ties had come loose, and the whole skein was falling apart. What fun, trying to get that tangle sorted out. I'm going to try and wind it into a ball now, so excuse any cursing you may hear.

27 January: While the gales rage

This week I have been knitting mostly neckwarmers.

(And listening to audio books. Alan Bennett and Wilkie Collins.)

The last scarf I finished was quite a nice article, but totally boring to knit. So I have been experimenting with different ways of using knitting to keep necks warm. Here's one version, in undyed handspun merino, incredibly soft and warm -


And this version uses up some oddments of BFL with some undyed white Shetland in a rather attractive mixture -

Both items were very quick to make, used far less yarn than a long scarf, and will both be excellent at keeping the draughts out.

Which will be good if the gales we've had this week continue. On the top of a hill, we catch most of the wind coming over the Pennines, and for several days now it's been howling round the houses, with trees and bushes bending at 45 degree angles, and something up in the roof has been rattling. Nothing seems to have fallen off, though, and the most violent gusts have abated now. The borders look a bit tidier - some of the leaves have been blown away. I wonder where they have ended up.

Our 3 snowdrops are out, as is a primula and an auricula, there are big buds on the hellebores, new leaves on the clematis and lots of shoots from various bulbs. Any day now I'll be able to bore you with more snaps of the plants in the garden.

23 January: Not quite an SBB*

Through the murk that has recently passed as daylight, I have seen a new visitor to the hanging peanut feeder (it's the feeder that hangs, not each individual peanut).

Peanuts have never been a real hit with our local birds, largely being ignored in favour of the pet shop's special mix containing some sort of dried up dead caterpillar or worm thing. (You may be able to tell that insects are not my specialist field of knowledge.) One summer a peanut feeder hanging from a pole on the lawn was popular with fledgling starlings, who were most entertaining, and even with a pair of magpies and one of their youngsters.

So it was with some surprise that I saw a few times this small unfamiliar bird clinging to the mesh and pecking away. But what was it? Not a blue or coal tit, not a finch, wren, robin, or dunnock, and definitely not a blackbird. The robin darts to a hanging seed feeder, snatches a morsel, and dashes for cover. The dunnocks, supposedly ground-feeders, have seen this, and have eventually copied, though they are not at ease with the procedure, and generally knock some bits to the ground and eat them there. This creature hangs there for perhaps as much as five minutes, alternately pecking then checking all round, pecking and checking.

Smaller than a dunnock, with a beak finer than a finch, paleish in colour, with some streaks on the sides and underneath, it had a definite greeny-yellow cast to its feathers, and a suggestion of a yellowish eye-stripe. Who lives in a plumage like this?

Might it be a chiff-chaff - only they aren't streaky, and shouldn't be here in winter. Perhaps a siskin? But the picture in the bird ID book in the kitchen shows a boldly marked bird with strong black and yellow, and goes on about black legs. Well you can't see the legs when it's on the far side of the feeder, nor its back and wings. And this body isn't splashy, it's subtle, and more hinting.

Oh, hang on, that picture is, of course, of the male bird in his breeding plumage - half the birds of any variety are not going to be male, are they? In the summer, there's juveniles as well - they can be really difficult to identify too. But the illustrations are always the male, in breeding plumage. The background may show a small female and/or juveniles, or they get a mention in the caption - "female duller" or "juveniles without..". But if you go to a large and expensive reference book (in the room we like to call the study), on page 1565 of Volume 2 you find a decent picture of a female siskin. And the text confirms that, though mainly birds of conifer woods, they also like birch and alder (plenty of them around here), and may visit gardens to eat peanuts.

Result!



*small brown bird

21 January: L-Urchin-g

Over the weekend, I ran out of knitting projects!!!

The fancy socks were finished last week, and the other 2 projects on the needles, a scarf that seemed endless, and an experimental hat, were both cast off on Saturday, and will be photographed soon.

So I picked up a pattern found through Ravelry - one of the many - and assembled needles and balls of wool. I swatched to get the right gauge, then cast on. On Sunday I picked it up again, looked at the pattern, and discovered that I couldn't make head or tail of the instructions. Clearly it involved short rows, with stitches left at each end of the piece of work to make the shaping, but the instructions as written didn't make sense to me.

So I worked out on a sheet of squared paper how it must be shaped, then I altered the shaping slightly, and made it. The original is called Urchin hat, so I reckon my version is L-Urchin-g.




Excuse the self-portrait style of photo, but the only way to get enough light in the right place this morning (it's snowing) was to use the bathroom mirror.

Even though it doesn't suit me, I was inordinately delighted with this hat, until DH remarked that it reminded him of someone out of Last of the Summer Wine.....

15 January: Fancy that!

The rest of the knitting world makes socks with fancy patterns on them, so I thought I'd better try it and see if I like it. (You may remember there was a previous abortive attempt when we were in Suffolk in September.)

So, after much cursing and unpicking over dropped stitches - and there's still one error on the foot of one sock - here they are:


As the yarn (Fyberspates superwash merino) knits up in stripes, I didn't want a pattern that would fight too much with that, and experimented with simple lace patterns. This one, Horseshoe Lace, looked fairly OK, and was easy to fit into the number of stitches needed.

I'm not sure if it's the stitch pattern or the yarn, but using the usual needles for socks in my size, they have worked up a little smaller than expected. So they are a snug fit rather than a generous fit, but they may relax with wear. I might even get to like them quite a lot.

9 January: In the olden days

A couple of things have made me cast my mind back 50 years.

Doing some family history research, in the form of asking a very old relative about various people, brought to mind that 50 years ago you wouldn't speak openly about people who'd been born out of wedlock (even the phrase is out of date now), nor about your German relatives, or anyone who'd committed suicide.

In 1958, few people had cars, and they weren't used in the way they are today, to take children to school and to pop down to the paper shop.

There were some TVs about, thanks to the Coronation in 1953, but programmes were very limited - children's hour, then later on some informative and educational stuff like What's My Line? and The Brains Trust. I'm not sure when ITV started, as my Mum never let us see it because it was common. Or was it because it was commercial?

Central heating was a rarity, for the affluent only. We had a coal fire in the front room, and a small electric fire in the kitchen. The bathroom (our house was modern - a proper bathroom and an indoor toilet) was heated by a paraffin stove for a while before bedtime washes. In the winter ice formed on the inside of the bedroom windows, and most of the kids had chilblains.

Most telephones in our area were party lines (that is, a shared line between 2 households), and take-away food was strictly fish and chips only.

The cinema in the local town provided fleas along with the film, but the last bus to our village left before the end of the film, so it was a good move to arrive before the end of the previous showing, so that you got the whole story.

Nobody suffered from stress or road rage, though, and food allergies were still in the future, as was any sort of foreign food (croissants, sushi, curry, pizza).

Scarlet fever was still a killer, but there was no MRSA.

Were things better then? Are things better now? Will things be better in another 50 years?

6 January: A walk in East Durham

East Durham - land of pit villages and closed pits, poverty and poor health. The place for our country walk on this bright sunny January Sunday.

We set off along an old wagon way, and then turned into fields with the remains of ancient hawthorn hedges -


One of the fields sloped down to this limestone outcrop covered with beech trees -

The sheep have prevented any natural regeneration of the trees, so there are only old ones to be seen. The path wound between trees above a sunken trackway -


Further on we got confused, as the leaflet describing the walk had clearly been written several years ago, as gates, fences, and stiles had changed or disappeared, and we had just walked off the edge of the Ordnance Survey sheet we took with us.

Eventually we found the right path, with only a small trouser tear and several hands covered in muck from clambering over fences, and in an overgrown tussocky area we sat on mossy logs in the sunshine and ate our lunch.

More fields, lots of clarts, and as the boots grew heavier with the accumulating mud, we reached a lane, where we turned towards the main road; we crossed this, then took a bridleway through another wood, past a small lake where members of the local angling club were enjoying gazing at a bit of dark water; onto a tarmac path (EU investment in economically depressed areas), and up another bit of wagon way, back to the car.

I used to drive through here on my way to work for several years, but had never explored it on foot. From the road there is no hint of how pleasant the landscape is. We plan to return and explore further another time.

3 January: Rhubarb and custard

That's what the colour of my new socks reminds me of.


No fancy stuff, just plain knitting for these, as they are not expected to stand up to washing and wearing. They are also a bit baggy, but then they are also expected to shrink. In fact, such a disaster is anticipated that they will probably be the best socks ever knitted.

The other, larger, project completed this week is this shawl -


For the non-knitter reader, there is a currently popular pattern for an entrelac (technical term for the sort of basket-weave effect) wrap called Lady Eleanor Entrelac Stole, which is rectangular and therefore involves lots of fiddly little triangles to make the edges straight. It seemed to me to be easier to utilise the natural shape of the work and make something triangular, hence this Not Lady Eleanor shawl. It's good and thick, nearly 6 feet across the wide end, and has used up loads of thickish yarn from my early adventures with spinning. (Hence the different colours.)

There's another pair of socks under way (can't have too many pairs of wool socks in this weather), and another scarf -

It was rather dark when this was photographed, and it's really a warm tawny mix. Unfortunately, the lace pattern is not terribly easy to remember, and I have to keep checking that I'm doing the knits, purls, and holes in the right places. So not so good for TV knitting.

This morning I had to venture out in the sprinkle of snow to get some groceries, so I decided to do the weekend shopping early. Just as well, because when I got back there was another 2 or 3 inches more snow on the ground at home; now I can stay in and admire the pretty snow from a nice warm room.

31 December: Season of ....

...reviews of the year and New Year Resolutions.

Calendar dates, much altered and generally mucked about historically, have always seemed rather arbitrary. Why not start the year with Christ's birthday? Or with the Winter Solstice? Why not start the year with spring instead of winter? January isn't really the start of anything - nowadays not even of the sales.

In my personal calendar, though, it's a year since I retired. The reality, naturally, did not match the expectation, but then, when did it ever? And this past year has been one of adjustment to the new circumstances.

Change is a constant, however, and so is adjustment, so really there's nothing new. Possibilities continue to arise and be considered, choices continue to be made. Decisions are best made when all conditions ripen; this doesn't neatly coincide with arbitrary dates.

The weather and the seasons have more influence when there is no employment competing for your concentration.

I turned over a new leaf when the leaves turned and fell from the trees, and feel no need for New Year resolutions.

Happy Irresolute New Year!

27 December: Return from foreign parts

Just because I wasn't here, don't think I missed Christmas (though I missed wishing you all a Merry Festive Season). There was plenty of Christmas Down South with the family we don't see all that often.

The journey is theoretically very simple - hop onto the A1 (M) and it's motorway or dual carriageway all the way to Surrey, apart from the last few miles; should take about 6 hours, including stops. It turned out to include detours to avoid miles of creeping traffic, and an interesting exploration of Surrey lanes in fog, and taking 8 hours, with only one very short stop.

Coming back home was very similar, but with marginally less traffic and no fog at all; this time an interesting detour into rural Lincolnshire was undertaken and a travel time of 7 hours was achieved.

In between we had a great time with most of DH's relatives, played lots of silly games, and ate enormous quantities of food. There were vast heaps of presents, plenty of Christmas music, a lovely walk round local lanes, lots of laughter, and even a festive dog, as shown in this very blurred picture -

Teddy is a Collie-Alsatian, with a skinny body and enormous feet, and he valiantly tackled mountains of leftovers to help with the clearing up.

DH usually forgets to pack a toothbrush, or socks, but this time the absent item was trousers. So on Christmas Eve we had to rush out to buy a pair of emergency trousers.

Tomorrow it's a confrontation with the scales and a return to the weight loss programme.

19 December: Subtle or what?

The knitting has not been neglected recently. Oh, no. But Ravelry has thrown a spanner in the works. (For those who don't know, and probably also don't care, Ravelry is an online knitting and crochet community - sort of Facebook for yarn addicts.)

I wasn't at all sure that it was going to interest me, as the people using the site are largely from the USA, and using commercial yarns to knit other people's patterns. The USA thing means that I sometimes have trouble understanding what's being said - what exactly does "yaaaay - way to go!" mean? And there are slight differences in terminology, needle sizing and so on. But there are groups of British knitters, groups of spinners, groups devoted to different techniques - lace, entrelac, stranded knitting - fans of different TV programmes, even a group devoted to spinning yarn to knit socks with.

So hours can be frittered away, roaming round the discussion boards and individual pages, looking at what other people are knitting, and finding dozens and dozens of freely offered patterns for illustrated projects. Every time I log on, I find another item I'd like to make, or a pattern I'd like to use. It's just like being in a sweet shop. (Only of course, I don't actually eat sweets any more.) And it can easily take over the precious knitting and spinning time.

But I've been strong.

Here's a pair of recently completed socks -


A little bored with plain socks, I decided to insert a panel of gansey pattern up each side of the legs of these socks, made with yarn hand-dyed in blue and charcoal. The result is so subtle as to be almost un-noticeable.

Not so this stuff, spun yesterday -


It's the yellow and strong Barbie pink fibre dyed recently, spun with some white to tone it down. It's been spun with lots of twist, and plyed with lots of twist, and will become another pair of experimental socks. Perhaps.

17 December: Less means more

I am slightly peeved. I have just had to go and buy some new trousers, as there was only one winter pair left in my wardrobe that fits. And 8 pairs that don't.

Plan A was that after Christmas new clothes would be bought to suit the reduced waistline, possibly even snaffling a bargain or two in the sales (though I am not fond of elbowing through the crowds, on account of my dislike of people en masse).

However, Plan B had to be rapidly devised when it was discovered that everything warm that isn't track suit trousers or other old running kit actually has room for me and Trinny. If we were just going to be at home all over Christmas, it wouldn't matter, but we are going to be socialising. Yes, we are going to grit our teeth and interact with real people. How we shall cope with any mountains of food on offer remains to be seen. But now there are these new smaller sized trousers there is even more incentive not to eat too much.

And on that subject, it seems that Stephen Fry is a convert to our Eat Less weight loss plan. What a pity there's no way of getting a lucrative book or magazine deal out of it.

12 December: In the kitchen

Last week, Lucy over at Box Elder had some interesting photos of her cutlery and washing up, so here's some of mine -


Breakfast for the two of us, plus the mugs from the previous evening's drink.

And on the window-sill are two small Christmas cactuses (cacti?), the scraps from a huge old one that was discarded last year. It never flowered until Easter, anyway.

But the offcuts are doing what they are supposed to do, and plump pink buds are developing -


They should be proper flowers for Christmas.

9 December: Walking in a winter woodland

Gone away were the blue birds, but there was some blue sky this morning. Not a breath of wind, perfect for a walk. Christmas trees were on sale at the visitor centre in Hamsterley Forest, but the car park was quiet. There were a few mountain bikers out on the trails, but not many walkers, apart from the usual few with dogs near the car park.


The stream was very full, brown with peat from the moors.


In sheltered places the snow of yesterday lingered.


The trees had been decorated already, by the melting frost.


In the fields the sheep were being fed. We hoped the gal on top would be able to get out of the container when all the hay had been eaten away from under her.


And although the beech seeds were gone from their cases, next year's buds are ready and waiting for the spring warmth and light.

7 December: Brighter

What a difference a bit of sunshine makes!

After the cloud and rain of the past few days, today the sky was blue and bright. Perhaps because the westerly gale had blown all the clouds to the North Sea, and there'll be some more rain coming later, but it's to be enjoyed while it's here. A bit of fresh air and wind in the hair and on the skin does wonders for physical and mental well-being.

I'd been to the shops and back before 10 o'clock, then there was another job to tackle - taking the cardboard to the tip, sorry, amenity point. There was a lot stacked up in the conservatory; not just in the box that we usually use, but a pile of boxes from the recent splurge of online Christmas shopping. It's amazing how little rubbish we put into the wheelie bin when the cardboard stuff has been separated out. Our local council collects glass, paper, and cans; we are happy to take cardboard to the recycling place ourselves, and would sort out and recycle plastic if there was somewhere locally to take it.

But I forgot to take the collection of plastic carrier bags to the supermarket with me (that's where they get recycled). Ever since my quilting days, when I made a series of shopping bags as quilt samples, there has been a bagful of cloth shopping bags in the kitchen cupboard. There is usually one with me when I go shopping, but it is difficult to stop shop assistants automatically giving you a bag. Some shops are now using paper bags, which is much preferable. But a few plastic bags creep in, and get stowed away in another container in the conservatory.

Other people have smart conservatories, with dining tables or sofas. We have an assortment of recycling containers, the exercise machine, garden chairs, several enormous plants, and a clothes horse (plus an interesting collection of spiders). It's not just a matter of junk accumulating to fill the space available (no, no), it's the otherwise inadequate storage provision in modern houses. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

3 December: The joys of Christmas shopping.

Aha! I thought, I'll be smart this year and do lots of my Christmas shopping online. No hassle fighting through the crowds, no queues for the car park, queues for the cafe, queues for the loos.

Off went the orders, back came some of the parcels.....

Then the phone call - "we'll get back to you" - no, they don't.

The e-mail - no response at all.

Guess I'll have to join the queue for the car park.

******************************

On the knitting front, I'm feeling pleased with myself, as I've probably just re-invented the wheel, so to speak.

Having knitted a sample for a technique I've never tried before, it occurred to me that working in a slightly different way would be much easier, so I drew myself a little sketch (OK, designed a shawl) and started to knit. This wasn't, of course, the project I was planning to do next, or indeed in the middle of another one, but I got carried away with my idea.

Now, if I investigate, I shall find that the world and his wife have been knitting this sort of thing for ages and ages; after all, there's very little in knitting that hasn't already been done by thousands of people all over the world centuries ago. But I still feel pleased that I can unvent some of these things for myself. And it demonstrates that beginner's mind still works, too.

30 November: More spinning

Some more of the fibre dyed last week is now yarn.


This is one of the two 125gm skeins spun from some of the brighter shades dyed last week. After trying several combinations of colours together, I decided on the violet, turquoise, jade, charcoal, and blue. I spun a bit from each colour in turn, so that the sequence was the same on each bobbin, but the amounts were slightly different. Then when plyed, the colours come together in different combinations.

Still on the woolly theme, I am now on Ravelry, as stitchwort.

27 November: Samples

So I tried spinning oatmeal BFL with bits of some of the stuff I dyed the other day.

The pastel shades were combined with the oatmeal in 2 variations. First I spun a single thread of oatmeal with bits of apricot, sage and lavender at intervals, and plyed that with a single of oatmeal. It was a bit lumpy to begin with, till I got the hang of it. That is the small skein at the top of this photo -


The lower skein is a single spun from the colours alone, plyed with a single spun from the oatmeal alone.

Then I knitted them up. As the yarns came out at about 18 w.p.i., I used 3 mm needles -

DH says subtle; I think perhaps dull.

23 November: Stirring from hibernation

This morning not only was it not raining, there was no heavy blanketing cloud cover - sunshine!

A walk round the garden revealed that, although the bird baths were frozen solid (one with an attractive selection of leaves embedded in the ice), there were a number of flowers still blooming. A perfect rose (Pink Perpetue), lobelias and nasturtiums, helenium, everlasting wallflower, a penstemon, verbena bonarensis and clematis.

Under the liquidambar tree was this -

And over by the windy fence -

But as I climbed into the car to go shopping, it began to snow. Out of a clear blue sky.

It has been so dismal and dark lately that yesterday I tried to bring some colour to the workroom - you will remember that I am currently knitting a brown scarf. So I grabbed a half kilo of Blue Faced Leicester fibre, and did a bit of dyeing -

Some of that is electrically bright, so it may end up being blended with some plain white fibre, or with some oatmeal coloured BFL. Maybe flecks of different colours in the oatmeal....

16 November: Birthday, Knitting, Tag

Happy Birthday, Son!

One of the current knitting projects is a scarf, in the pattern Here and There Cables by Norah Gaughan, from the book Scarf Style.


The scarf illustrated in the book is knitted from much thicker yarn, in a variegated pale green. My version is in hand-spun black Wensleydale yarn, about 17 w.p.i., so is much narrower. The wool is sensationally soft, and much, much nicer than white Wensleydale. And of course, it isn't really black - more of a dark brown.

This stitch pattern attracted me because it is the same on both sides, and initially I couldn't see how it was done. It turns out to be remarkably simple, with the cabling on every 7th row, so it makes ideal work for TV watching (if any programmes appeal), or to take along to a Guild workshop day, where much chat occurs.

Tagged again by Granny J - this time it's 7 Things About Me.

1 - I have never read any of Jane Austen's novels.

2- I enjoy train journeys, apart from the stations and the other passengers.

3 - Maps fascinate me.

4 - 25 years in County Durham have failed to eradicate my southern accent.

5 - I would never make a mathematician

6 - I still don't know what I want to do when I grow up.

All passing readers are invited to pick up this tag and give us their own 7 Things.

12 November: Choices

Contrary to popular belief, it's not actually difficult to eat less, especially if you have been aware for some time that you have been eating too much, and simply don't need all that food.

All you have to do is to make the choice (and we all make constant choices) to reduce the amount going into your mouth.

Interest in food can be diverted to choosing what to eat - incidentally it all tastes better when there's less quantity; and obviously, you can also choose to improve the quality when you eat less. Time spent preparing meals can be much less, for example just the time needed to cook some pasta and stir a small jar of pesto through it, and sprinkle a few nuts and seeds on top. Or slide a frozen pizza into the oven while you put a salad together, fill the coffee maker and wash some apples for a pudding. Or you can have that fruit pie, but a smaller piece than you used to have. (Of course, anyone so inclined can spend hours preparing a meal that is eaten in three minutes, but that's a choice I don't make.)

Doing away with snacks between meals is a basic move in this strategy too. Any hunger pangs can be diverted by drinking sugar water instead of coffee - this idea came from a book called The Shangri-La Diet, by Seth Roberts, which suggests drinking sugar water or olive oil as a way to slim. I actually tried the olive oil - once. But the sugar water provides enough to convince your stomach that you are full. Dr Roberts puts forward interesting theories about diet in his book, and I have certainly found the sugar water helpful.

There is a saying that 3 parts of a full stomach feed the person, the fourth feeds their doctor.
Plus the food industry, the advertising industry, and the slimming industry.

Keeping a balance can be tricky when you cut down, but I already take a multi-vitamin tablet and a flax seed oil capsule every day - the oil and the absence of meat has improved the joint pains and stiffness I used to get. We all know by now that processed foods have lots of ingredients that do you no good (and never quite look as good in reality as they do on the packaging!), but fruit and veg don't have those snazzy labels on to tell you how much fat etc. is in them. Mind you, it's alarming how many calories are in some foods that are often thought of as slimming.

Anyway, I have lost another pound since I last posted about this, and now have to keep my jeans up with a belt.

9 November: Less is more

After 11 months of retirement, I think I'm getting used to it. But the reduction in exercise, from lots of walking about, standing, and climbing stairs, to a life of indolence, together with my sweet tooth, and continued consumption of cakes and sweets, was having the inevitable effect on what used to be my waistline.

I've never been small - at 5'10" and over 10 stone, a size 14 was OK widthways, though often not quite long enough. But since I stopped running and orienteering after I had cancer in 1992, the pounds have crept on, and a size 16 became a size 18. But when a size 18 starts to feel a bit tight, and you can't bend over properly because of a great wodge of fat, and 13 stone is horribly near, something has to be done.

Diets have always been a strange thing that other people undertake with much talk and usually little to show for them, and most of the popular diets have been patently ludicrous.

But after a month, I have lost half a stone by a sure-fire diet that I can recommend to everyone - the 2 word diet. I feel better, my clothes are getting loose, and I'm totally amazed at how easy it has been. So far, of course - it may not continue, as it may be difficult to keep a new low weight stable. But I'll worry about that when I get there.

So, here is a photo of the cat enjoying the new winter arrangements, now it's too chilly to have the conservatory door open all day -

He seems to like the blanket (crocheted from odd bits of hand-spun) we put on the sofa to protect it from his claws, and he blends nicely into the cushions.

Oh, the name of the diet?


"EAT LESS".

6 November: Further adventures in yarn

The slipover in intarsia squares is finished -


It was suggested that plain sleeves might complete it, but the problem with that is why it's in multi-coloured squares in the first place - not a lot of yarn in any one colour!

In fact, it might eventually get sleeves, as I have been thinking for a while about knitting long arm warmers; like fingerless mittens, only armpit-length. As preparation for this, I've made a number of samples in slip stitch and/or rib variations. And there's still part of a ball of wool in each of those colours left in the Shetland crate!

Much thumbing of stitch pattern books has taken place; as well as Mary Thomas' Book of Knitting Patterns, there are 4 others full of different patterns. 'The Harmony Guide to Knitting Stitches' is dated 1984, and their recent Volume 3 offers 440 more patterns, while Volume 4 has 250 creative knitting stitches. The other book was my mother's, and the only date I can find on it is 1968. The price on the cover is 10/-, so it must be pre-decimalisation. It's called 'Knitting Dictionary 800 Stitches Patterns', and was published by Mon Tricot. I have followed Mum's example, and added notes to some of the patterns.

In spite of the wealth of patterns in these books, I have never used many of them, and I really don't know why not. Some of them, of course, are extremely tedious to work, and the final result is not worth the fuss, but there are some super effects that don't appear too hard to do - must add them to my list of things to try out.

Some lovely multi-coloured yarns are not shown to their best with complex stitch patterns, as I discovered recently with socks. And on the topic of lovely multi-coloured yarns, I have just finished spinning last month's Yarn Yard Fibre Club roving -


It may be a little darker than this in reality, but you can't complain about strong sunlight, can you? There isn't a project in mind for it yet, but I have just bought Pam Allen's "Scarf Style", and there's a little Vogue book of shawls somewhere in the downstairs bookcase, so there are plenty of ideas to hand.