23 February: 2 seasons in 2 weeks

Ten days ago we were struggling through snow, today the garden has not only these -


but also these -


and even this!

21 February: Hamsterley coatless

At the third attempt, we made it to the forest. The first time, we forgot something, and had to go back, which was just as well, because the second time we set out, the car broke down at the top of the street!

Anyway, after the RAC had towed it away for the pump that was replaced a couple of weeks ago to be done right (we hope) this time, we took my little car, and actually got there.

Glorious sunshine when we arrived, though the wind got up and brought cloud across later. We started off on a different path from usual, made some interesting choices at junctions, and went off-path a few times. There are still plenty of places we haven't yet seen, and you can't really get lost - anyway we had both map and GPS.

Just as we were starting to feel hungry, we found a seat at a major track junction, where we munched on home-made bread rolls and fruit.

A bit later on we followed this stream down the hillside -


to the bigger stream. There was a lot of water coming off the moors above the forest and down the hillsides, and at the ford 2 mountain bikers were just about to cross. Neither of them made it with dry feet, but they did clean their bikes a bit!


The footbridge a few hundred yards further on was our preferred option, beyond this little waterfall-y bit, then we explored another path that was new to us, before returning to more familiar tracks.

As usual, there were few people about in the further parts of the forest, but there were lots of families nearer the car park. A good day to be out and about; the jacket, magic overtrousers, woolly hat and mittens, all stayed in my smart new daybag; a long-sleeved T-shirt and a good wool jersey were all that was required (yes, trousers as well!).

Heavens, at this rate, I may need to look for my shorts next month!

20 February: Durham hatless

How pleasant to be able to walk about without a woolly hat, scarf and gloves!

After a meeting in Durham today, I walked back to the car. Deciding against the riverbank path, I went up South Street for the first time in (possibly) years. As the trees are leafless, the cathedral is visible from the road.

Actually, I think I like the woodland bit better than the cathedral bit.

12 February: Still no snow photos

Happy (significant) Birthday, DD!

Just when it had thawed a bit yesterday, today it snowed constantly all day. DH, extremely glad he didn't have to go out, spent the day moving bits of furniture round, and setting up his hi-fi system in his new playroom study.

And for our tea we had comfort food - chips with our omelette, and then a tin of fruit cocktail. Do you remember when a tin of fruit cocktail was a touch of luxury?

And here are a couple of photos as a reminder that sometimes the sun shines warmly and the flowers bloom:

10 February: No snow photos

Well, I haven't had a minute.

It's not that life has gone into slow motion; more that now there's two of us doing not very much, it seems to take twice as long! (And getting at the computer during the day is now half as likely.)

And all this snow doesn't help. Living above the snow-line as we do, the street in front of the house has been thick with ice for what seems like weeks - in the shadow of the houses it takes ages to melt. The main roads, of course, are clear, but local pavements are still treacherous, and as a visit to A & E is unappealing any foray out of the house has to be carefully negotiated.

In fact I am thoroughly fed up with the snow and ice hampering everything we want to do, and would be most grateful if it would just go away.

2 February: 2 Pensioners

DH has now finished work, and we have been busy all weekend with making a start on re-organising the house. As I have a room for all my fibre stuff, it's only fair that he should have a room to potter about in as well. And there are only the 2 of us in this 4-bedroomed house.

And so there has been much moving about of furniture, clothes, junk, papers, and general stuff, of which we seem to have a huge amount. Some of it has been moved to the tip, and there's a big stack of stuff to go to charity shops.

This morning we woke to snow again, but of course nobody had to struggle through it to get to work [ :) ], so after a second cup of coffee we did some more sorting out of old papers, and some re-constructing of old photo albums.

Knitting continues, and the current project is well advanced, and a photo has been taken for its Ravelry project page. The recently spun wool/silk batt is slowly becoming a top-down raglan cardigan, following Barbara Walker's recipe.

And a few pairs of old hand-knitted socks have been tossed onto the "out" pile, so there's a bit of space in the sock drawer. And we all know nature hates empty space.

25 January: Domestic goddess or what?

Today I have been mostly making marmalade.

I had this idea that home-made marmalade would be nicer than the shop stuff. And there's a preserving pan in the cupboard. We have assiduously recycled all our empty glass jars for months, but recently all jars have been carefully put aside; there were 6 by the time I spotted the marmalade oranges in the supermarket (just when I'd begun to think that Mr Tesco knew that nobody made their own any more, and didn't stock them). Luckily the cook shop in Durham sells jam jars.

Unsure how much would come from a bag of oranges, I bought 2 bags. By the time one bagful was chopped up this morning, it was perfectly clear that there were enough oranges for a couple of years' supply, at least.

So here is 1.5 kilos of oranges, one lemon, and 6 pints of water stewing away merrily -


Unfortunately, the instructions about the pips were a bit unclear, and when the fruit was cooked up, there were about a thousand pips still in it. So a merry hour or so was spent picking the pips out.

In went 3 kilos of sugar, and the whole lot boiled -


until it was done. Then came a rather sticky episode, pouring the (extremely hot) marmalade into a jug which poured it erratically into the assembled warm jars -


This photo is after wiping off the excess stickiness. The recipe booklet is one that my mother extravagantly paid sixpence for, but it's probably been worth it.

I was so pleased with my efforts that I made some labels on the computer; the jars may be an odd assortment, but the labels all match!


Now, what about that second bag of oranges.....

19 January: All change

It's no wonder my eczema's flared up.

DH's application for early retirement (only a few months early) has been approved, and he will retire at the end of this month. After 42 and a half years, man and boy, in the same job, he is finally leaving.

There will be all sorts of adjustments to make. We have considered down-sizing, but whenever we think carefully about that, it seems that what we really need is a bigger house. Anyway, moving anywhere might be rather tricky in the present economic climate.

How will we cope with having each other around all the time? We haven't even got a shed.

He has never been a great one for hobbies or joining clubs and things, and I can't see that changing. When people have been asking him what he plans to do with his retirement, he's been saying he wants to get out more. (His father's answer to the same question was "nothing", which he did very successfully for many years.)

All sorts of possibilities are open, but I certainly found that when I retired and had the time and freedom to do whatever I wanted, I didn't really want to do anything much. It might be different with the two of us - we shall see.

17 January: Sunshine!

"Rain before 7, fine by 11" - held good today, so we decided to park in Hollingside Lane for our shopping trip into Durham.

The sun was shining as we walked through Great High Wood -


and there were signs of spring in the leaf litter -


Walking down from what used to be Mountjoy cottage gives a different view of the cathedral -


A different view across Kingsgate Bridge -


When we walked back along the river bank, there was much activity on the river - a game of kayak basketball under Baths Bridge, and lots of rowing all along the river (with the obligatory view of the cathedral in the background!).

14 January: ABC Wednesday - Z

Zen Buddhism - as Rev. Master Jiyu-Kennett said, a religion for adults. You take responsibility for your own training, though there are teachers to guide and help. You do it yourself, meditation and keeping the Precepts; and you get the karmic consequences of your actions. (The law of karma states that every action has a consequence, or an equal and opposite reaction - or was that something else?)

Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path, Three Refuges, Ten Great Precepts - lots of numbers. Most of them are different aspects of the same thing. It's not easy, but you try to learn from mistakes, and do better.

As I understand it, and I could be wrong, Soto Zen differs from Rinzai Zen in that there is less emphasis on koans; as the Rules for Meditation tell us "the koan appears naturally in daily life". Zen Buddhism differs from other Buddhist paths in its emphasis on formal seated meditation.

There are probably more varieties of Buddhism than of Christianity. Google will help if you want to know more.

Zen and karma are words that have been taken from their original meanings and applied in a fuzzy way to all sorts of stuff, and Buddha figures have been used as household and garden ornaments - it amuses me to think of people using Jesus in the same way, but at least it gives Buddhists a chance to bow to Buddha more often.

"going, going, going on beyond, and always going on beyond - always becoming Buddha"

Homage to the Buddha,
Homage to the Dharma,
Homage to the Sangha.

12 January: Finished jersey

And here's the jersey mentioned in the previous post, now finished. The pink and turquoise (which were done with dyes named Plum and Sage) are a bit brighter than I expected, and the pattern that started off looking like waves has ended up looking more like circular saws.

But it's lovely and warm, and soft and comfortable.


It's hard to photograph a jersey you're wearing, but here's an attempt.


If that doesn't make the weather warm up a bit, I don't know what will.

7 January: ABC Wednesday - Y

Yarn, of course! My passion is spinning and dyeing my own yarn, so that I have lots to choose from when I knit. Not only wool, sometimes silk, soy, Tencel, even recycled plastic bottle fibre; but mostly wool.

Some of this recently dyed Shetland is my current jersey-in-progress -


This dyed BFL fibre (that's fleece from the Blue Faced Leicester breed of sheep) was spun and knitted up into a big warm shawl -


Most of this yarn, the purple merino and silk, and the tweedy grey mixed wool and silk, are destined for a jacket which is in the planning stage, and may be the next project on the needles -


And this is my current yarn and fibre storage system, 5 folding crates, with associated bags -


And, as the fibre supply is a bit low, an order for more has just been posted - I may need another crate!

31 December - ABC Wednesday - X

Not much to choose from for X, but as I am a life-long "incomer", it's Xenophobia that strikes a chord.

Here is a poem about it -

We and They

Father, Mother, and Me,
Sister and Auntie say
All the people like us are We,
And everyone else is They.
And They live over the sea,
While we live over the way,
But - would you believe it? - They look upon We
As only a sort of They!

We eat pork and beef
With cow-horn handled knives.
They who gobble Their rice off a leaf,
Are horrified out of Their lives;
While They who live up a tree,
And feast on grubs and clay,
(Isn't it scandalous?) look upon We
As a simply disgusting They!

We shoot birds with a gun
They stick lions with spears.
Their full-dress is un-,
We dress up to Our ears.
They like Their friends for tea.
We like Our friends to stay;
And, after all that, They look upon We
As an utterly ignorant They!

We eat kitcheny food.
We have doors that latch.
They drink milk or blood,
Under an open thatch.
We have Doctors to fee.
They have Wizards to pay.
And (impudent heathen!) They look upon We
As a quite impossible They!

All good people agree,
And all good people say,
All nice people, like Us, are We
And everyone else is They:
But if you cross over the sea,
Instead of over the way,
You may end by (think of it!) looking on We
As only a sort of They!

Rudyard Kipling.

Looking forward to another year of war, conflict and hate? Or peace and happiness? We all have choices and the ability to learn.

And on that serious note, I'm off to do a bit of freeform crochet.

28 December - Not Just a Salmon

This pattern was published in the latest knitty, and it appealed to me, so I made it, using some sock yarn that was never going to become socks.


Yes, it's a hat, and it is supposed to look like a dead fish. The yarn used is pretty much the right sort of colour for a bear's leftovers, in my imagination (not being terribly familiar with long-dead fish).

Must wear it next time I go to town on the bus.

24 December: ABC - W for Wednesday Walk 7

W was going to be Wool, and my spinning Wheel, but we had a really glorious walk in Hamsterley Forest today, so it's another Walk.

There were very few vehicles in the car park when we arrived, about 10.30; by the time we left there were more, but it was still a minority choice for a visit today.

The sun shone over the moorland, and there were still some Christmas trees left.

Not all the trees are Forestry Commission planted conifers. This one was there long before the Forestry Commission -


And so was this one, which was pollarded many, many years ago -


There was a lot of water in the ditches and on the tracks, though the river didn't seem particularly full. In a few places, temporary streams were making their own way down to the valley bottom -


When we got home, the postman had brought the Christmas present that DH had been hoping for!

17 December: ABC Wednesday - V

V is for Ventriloquist, who appeared in Variety shows.

This is Maude Edwards, Lady Ventriloquist, with her doll, the little stable boy.

Maude was born in 1886 in Corporation Street, Birmingham, the sixth of eight children of a Horse Keeper (and reputed former jockey). You don't see many horses round there nowadays.

She made her stage debut in 1905, trained and managed by her older brother Tom Edwards, also a ventriloquist, and later a successful theatrical manager. In October 1906 she sailed to the US, where she toured American Music Halls until May 1907. At some point after her return, she decided that brother Tom was taking too large a slice of her earnings, and sued him in the High Court. She won her case, with costs, causing another of the family's well-known "all-fired" rows, and of course a huge rift between the siblings.

She worked in Music Halls in many places, and often toured the North-East of England. She met James Cameron, a singer in a group called The Cameron Quartette (3 Cameron brothers, sometimes with a 4th brother, and sometimes with a friend). They were married in St. Nicholas' Cathedral, Newcastle, early in 1910, and later that year their only child was born in Whitley Bay - they were still on tour.

World War 1 interrupted James' career; he was on the way home from a successful tour of Australia when war broke out. He served in the Royal Flying Corps.

Radio killed off the Music Halls, of course, and Maude retired from the stage. Until about 1940 they lived in Brixton, which was a popular place with theatrical folk in the first half of the 20th century.

Much later, after James died (on Christmas Day, 1955), Maude went to live in a retirement home for former stage folk, a home which was run by the Order of Water Rats (a charity organised by people involved in variety), and funded partly by the Royal Variety Performance. She died in 1976.

Maude and James were my grandparents.

15 December: Wednesday (moved to Sunday) Walk 6

The unceasing rain on Saturday fell as snow further up Weardale, as we found when we set out for a walk.

At this point we were at 2 degrees, West and Centigrade, according to those of us who had high-tech stuff with them.


There was sunshine on the other side of the dale, behind Stanhope.


And of course, a few sheep got into the photos.


It didn't feel very cold, as the air was still. So was the water in the old quarry.


Home in time for tea by the fire, with home-made cake and home-made shortbread.

13 December: Eek - steeks!

This is an entirely knitting-orientated posting, so if you're not interested, look away now.

The next jersey is in the planning stage, and this one is going to be my first one with steeks. Yes, knitting in the round to the shoulders, then cutting the knitting to make armholes, and probably a front placket too.

So, instead of knitting a whole jersey, then experimenting with that, I picked up an idea online, and made a sample.


The sample is worked in the round (trying out a few stitch patterns at the same time) and I closed the top with a 3 needle bind off to replicate a jersey shoulder. Most of the instructions on steeking tell you to machine stitch on each side of the proposed cut, but I really didn't want to do that, as the machine stitching would be a completely different tension and feel from the knitting. I reckoned that if I cut each pair of threads, and then knotted them together, that would prevent any unravelling - logical, but would it be practical?


Yes, it worked fine. There are an awful lot of ends to tidy up, but it's a possible solution. Actually, I have a striped cardigan with an awful lot of ends (2 row stripes in many different colours), and I just cut them and left them as fringes down the insides of the seams , and that's fine, so I could just leave the ends to felt slowly together.

But then I stumbled on a paragraph in "The Best of Interweave Knits, Our Favorite Designs from the First Ten Years", in a jersey design by Ron Schweitzer. It suggests casting on 10 extra stitches to make the steek, then cutting down between the 5th and 6th stitches, picking up the stitches for the sleeve/neckband from the first and last extra stitches, then finishing the steek by folding back the cut edges, trimming if you want, and sewing them down on the inside with cross stitches. This is very easy, very tidy, and very secure. And as it's all done with the knitting yarn, there is no tension or materials conflict.

I picked up and knitted a few rows of stocking stitch.


And this is the inside - the right hand side was cross-stitched in black, so then I did the left side with white, so that in future I can see how I did it. You will observe that the stitching is not as neat as it might be, but hey! it's only a working sample!


Now I feel confident I can do the steeks. I shall go and cast on.

10 December: ABC Wednesday - U

Underfoot - one of my favourite photo categories. Subjects are close at hand, and often stationary. And the most amazing, beautiful, and interesting things can often be found right under your nose.

This is stitchwort (whose name I borrowed for blog purposes), a wayside and woodland flower which blooms at the same time as bluebells and red campion, sometimes offering the chance of red, white, and blue flowers in one photo -


Walks along the sea-shore provide unexpected shapes and endless patterns in the sand -


And in the forest, rocks beside the path can prove fascinating, decorated with lichens -


While back in the garden, some of the trees simply throw photo opportunities at you -


Hurrah for small treasures!

7 December: Colour!

Snow, ice, freezing wind, pavements like skating rinks, shops crowded with festive shoppers - how much pleasanter to stay at home and dye some yarn.

Using the sample packs of Landscape dyes I bought recently from Wingham Wool Work, I dyed some Shetland plus 3 skeins of BFL, with excellent results.


Most of the skeins are done as "semi-solid", i.e. one colour shading across the skein; the 3 BFL skeins are done with 2 different dyes - they are the creamy beige, the blue-grey, and the 2-tone sweet-pea pink.


And to brighten the day still further, here are pictures of a modular bag (both sides), which I finished a couple of days ago - just the right size for a knitting project in progress.

3 December: ABC Wednesday - T

Today's topic is Trees.

As Joyce Kilmer wrote in 1914,

I think that I shall never see

A poem lovely as a tree.

They are essential to me - in the garden, on walks, and as part of a view. They are part of so many of my photos that it's hard to choose just a few. My albums are full of leaves, buds, bark, oaks, maples, hawthorns, beech and birch.

The bluebell woods in May -


And a most inviting path in September -


August farmland -


These sunlit leaves were my desktop picture for a long time -


And this totally out-of-focus shot is my current desktop picture (it's even more blurry in big) -

1 December: Dancers

The other day, I accidentally saw a bit of the TV show "Strictly Come Dancing" - now I understand the popularity of the current song by the Killers - "Are we human or are we dancers?".