Two Months in the Country
I am increasingly conscious that I have not put anything onto LJ/DW for nearly two months now - despite having had more than enough blogging material.
Knitting and crochet for example. I not only finished the Hex Jacket adapted from ‘Knitting Nature’ - with two adaptations not in the pattern, a cable up the back because I got bored of rows and rows of double moss stitch (if I wanted to do plain knitting I’d get out the knitting machine), and a set of crochet hexagons round the neck and front instead of the fiddly ‘knitted in the round in situ’ ones in the pattern. Having some wool left over I did a matching coat for Draco (I’m getting the hang of fitting dog coats) and a hat for me.
I currently have two other projects on the go, my first pair of knitted gloves (or at least the cuff of A knitted glove, we will see how it goes from there) and a mohair hat (not keen on working with mohair yarn as it’s difficult to unpick when it goes wrong).
I also re-covered three of our dining room chairs, with the final one yet to do - probably this week.
[There would be a pic here, but I can’t find the cable to download from the camera]
I’m pretty much all written out at the moment - I did something for Minerva-fest , and have been struggling with formatting a mere 200 word double drabble for HP-Halloween (I keep forgetting how to reset those damn ‘smart quotes’ on this machine, and don’t want to go to the faff of setting up my old machine and waiting for it to warm up - a process which takes slightly longer than my old portable valve TV did in the 60s.
I have dug up the manuscript of my abandoned ‘Macklin Hatstand’ from store and have about five pages (of 30) transcribed. The problem with returning to something written thirty years ago is (a) reading my handwriting and (b) trying to remember what things looked like at the time - and whether I should change stuff based on imperfect memory. I need to do some research on things (like car makes and weaponry) which I could just have tossed off without thinking at the time.
At least rewriting old stuff means that I do not have to think up anything new. I don’t think my brain is up to it at the moment.
This has been a busy couple of months for the dogs.
At the end of September we went to Hyland Park, just outside Writtle for an event called ‘All About Dogs’ which I discovered through my ETT club. The weather was great, all the dogs (every breed you could possibly imagine) behaved well. We did some shopping, and Draco has a personally fitted harness. Also had a go at the ‘Advanced’ agility course set up by the Essex Dog Club - and did very well considering that I hadn’t had a chance to walk the very twisty course in advance. Unlike in real competitions Draco did not feel the need to run round each jump three times to check for hidden grues, or to pretend he’d never seen a see saw before. Maybe we will try a couple of competitions next year after all.
The next weekend we put the cats into the cattery and took the dogs up to stay in a farm cottage on top of the Bingley moor for a few days. Mainly because we’d not seen Cimorene for a while. Did some shopping (mostly wool - what else in Yorkshire?), ate, and walked the dogs over the moors (which they loved). The weather was mostly fine. Unfortunately on entering the cottage on one of the wetter days I slipped on the tiles and bruised (though thankfully didn’t break) my left foot, which cut down on my ability to drive and meant that we didn’t get to see Chris on our last day.
The cottage was OK, but difficult to access (on a sharp turn at a blind corner off a 50mph road with a 17% incline). I’m looking for somewhere else in the area that takes dogs (the place we stayed at in Skipton when we only had Draco was lovely - but not big enough for two dogs :(.
Came back to an invitation to do a stint manning the ETT stand at ‘Discover Dogs’, this year in the ExCel centre a few stops down the tube from us rather than at Earls Court (being redeveloped) on the other side of London. I signed up for Sunday so Lil went on Saturday and came back with lots of freebies for Bren. Draco and I went down the next day - Draco loves riding on the Tube - and the DLR it turns out. I took Lil’s camera but didn’t take a single photo - much too busy meeting people.
And this weekend I was at the Supreme Cat Show - sans cat, to man the club stand there. An event that is a shadow of its glory days in the 90s, but still good to meet up with old friends. I seem to have commissioned a ceramic statuette of Draco…
Phew. This week will be busy too. My hearing aid gave out at ExCel, so I need to find time to go to the drop in centre at Whipps Cross sometime. And my new glasses are giving me a headache so a trip down to Ilford for arm adjustment is needed. And I have an appointment in Loughton library car park for a boob-squish this week - which will give me a chance to return the Jill Paton Walsh books that I picked up last week when Lil had her appointment.
Review later (or not, depending on how I feel).
This entry was originally posted at http://inamac.dreamwidth.org/99723.html. You may comment here or there (or not).
Knitting and crochet for example. I not only finished the Hex Jacket adapted from ‘Knitting Nature’ - with two adaptations not in the pattern, a cable up the back because I got bored of rows and rows of double moss stitch (if I wanted to do plain knitting I’d get out the knitting machine), and a set of crochet hexagons round the neck and front instead of the fiddly ‘knitted in the round in situ’ ones in the pattern. Having some wool left over I did a matching coat for Draco (I’m getting the hang of fitting dog coats) and a hat for me.
I currently have two other projects on the go, my first pair of knitted gloves (or at least the cuff of A knitted glove, we will see how it goes from there) and a mohair hat (not keen on working with mohair yarn as it’s difficult to unpick when it goes wrong).
I also re-covered three of our dining room chairs, with the final one yet to do - probably this week.
[There would be a pic here, but I can’t find the cable to download from the camera]
I’m pretty much all written out at the moment - I did something for Minerva-fest , and have been struggling with formatting a mere 200 word double drabble for HP-Halloween (I keep forgetting how to reset those damn ‘smart quotes’ on this machine, and don’t want to go to the faff of setting up my old machine and waiting for it to warm up - a process which takes slightly longer than my old portable valve TV did in the 60s.
I have dug up the manuscript of my abandoned ‘Macklin Hatstand’ from store and have about five pages (of 30) transcribed. The problem with returning to something written thirty years ago is (a) reading my handwriting and (b) trying to remember what things looked like at the time - and whether I should change stuff based on imperfect memory. I need to do some research on things (like car makes and weaponry) which I could just have tossed off without thinking at the time.
At least rewriting old stuff means that I do not have to think up anything new. I don’t think my brain is up to it at the moment.
This has been a busy couple of months for the dogs.
At the end of September we went to Hyland Park, just outside Writtle for an event called ‘All About Dogs’ which I discovered through my ETT club. The weather was great, all the dogs (every breed you could possibly imagine) behaved well. We did some shopping, and Draco has a personally fitted harness. Also had a go at the ‘Advanced’ agility course set up by the Essex Dog Club - and did very well considering that I hadn’t had a chance to walk the very twisty course in advance. Unlike in real competitions Draco did not feel the need to run round each jump three times to check for hidden grues, or to pretend he’d never seen a see saw before. Maybe we will try a couple of competitions next year after all.
The next weekend we put the cats into the cattery and took the dogs up to stay in a farm cottage on top of the Bingley moor for a few days. Mainly because we’d not seen Cimorene for a while. Did some shopping (mostly wool - what else in Yorkshire?), ate, and walked the dogs over the moors (which they loved). The weather was mostly fine. Unfortunately on entering the cottage on one of the wetter days I slipped on the tiles and bruised (though thankfully didn’t break) my left foot, which cut down on my ability to drive and meant that we didn’t get to see Chris on our last day.
The cottage was OK, but difficult to access (on a sharp turn at a blind corner off a 50mph road with a 17% incline). I’m looking for somewhere else in the area that takes dogs (the place we stayed at in Skipton when we only had Draco was lovely - but not big enough for two dogs :(.
Came back to an invitation to do a stint manning the ETT stand at ‘Discover Dogs’, this year in the ExCel centre a few stops down the tube from us rather than at Earls Court (being redeveloped) on the other side of London. I signed up for Sunday so Lil went on Saturday and came back with lots of freebies for Bren. Draco and I went down the next day - Draco loves riding on the Tube - and the DLR it turns out. I took Lil’s camera but didn’t take a single photo - much too busy meeting people.
And this weekend I was at the Supreme Cat Show - sans cat, to man the club stand there. An event that is a shadow of its glory days in the 90s, but still good to meet up with old friends. I seem to have commissioned a ceramic statuette of Draco…
Phew. This week will be busy too. My hearing aid gave out at ExCel, so I need to find time to go to the drop in centre at Whipps Cross sometime. And my new glasses are giving me a headache so a trip down to Ilford for arm adjustment is needed. And I have an appointment in Loughton library car park for a boob-squish this week - which will give me a chance to return the Jill Paton Walsh books that I picked up last week when Lil had her appointment.
Review later (or not, depending on how I feel).
This entry was originally posted at http://inamac.dreamwidth.org/99723.html. You may comment here or there (or not).