Monday, 9th January: Day 9 & Tuesday, 10th January: Day 10

Again, a bulletin of several parts.

Firstly, the Knotty Knitters returned today from Christmas Vacation - YAY!

While a small meeting, everybody was on fine form and many have completed projects over the break and are about to start something new. For my part, I finished one of a pair of Gents wristies for the shop, and began the pair.

Also, Eugenie has given the nod for a second, complementary club, which will run Thursday afternoons, starting from 14.00 on a drop-in, drop-out basis, in the Cultural Quarters and will be open to all knitters and crocheters who want to come, whether they already go to Knotty Knitters or not. The Tearooms are also open during this time, so come on in and enjoy some stitching and socialisation.

The second piece of creativity for yesterday and today was, the creation of The Cultural Quarters' own blog, which is located here: http://ballinamoreculturalquarters.blogspot.com/

and will be the best place on the web to keep up with all the busy goings on in this fabulous new project right in the heart of Ballinamore.

Last, but by no means least, I did promise you a mini interview with dynamic project leader Tracy Murray, who is spearheading the whole Cultural Quarters development, and here it is:

* So, all this activity and excitement has the town buzzing. What exactly are we doing with the place?

We have been given a fabulous opportunity to open up this historic building as a place for everyone, a venue for arts, crafts, music, poetry, pretty much anything that people want (within reason). The main idea is to keep the centre of our town vibrant and to provide interest for both locals and tourists alike.

* You mention it's a historic building. Wasn't this the old police barracks?

Yes, in fact John McGahern's father was stationed here during that time. The premises were then taken over and operated by Deirdre as a bakery/cafe with a clothes shop above, then later it's returned to those roots with the vintage clothing shop and tearooms now both on the ground floor (with outdoor seating for the tearooms coming this spring) and it has also become an events space as well as the home of the Ballinamore Free Fringe Festival which launched last year.

* It really is great down here! (and anyone who's not already been in to look around and have the "grand tour") So how can people get involved?

There are so many ways that people can help. Broadly, these fit into two categories - material and non-material things that we need. This is our current wishlist:

Material items ~

• Paint
• Furniture (especially tables)
• Plants
• Money

Other, Non-Material Items ~

• Ideas (we have the space, now lets use it. - Every suggestion within reason will be considered and we will support as many ideas as we can)
• Plumber(s)
• Gardeners
• Skilled and Unskilled Volunteer pairs of hands

* Sounds great! When is all this taking place?

We're open every week, Tuesday - Saturday from 10.00 to 18.00 and at other times by arrangement.

Drop in any time or reach us through the Cultural Quarters' page on facebook or through our blog at http://ballinamoreculturalquarters.blogspot.com/

As each room gets finished, it will be up and operational. We currently have the Vintage Clothing Shop, the Tearooms, Antiques Shop and Reading Room all open. The events room upstairs is hosting the regular Saturday Flea Market (10.00 - 15.00) and is available to book at other times.

* That's a lot of things already. What are some of the other things we can look forward to?

• Burns' Night (January 25th)
• Craftsy Crafters Day Party (January 26th)
• Flea Market every Saturday
• Music and Spanish Classes with Leo
• Italian Classes with Al
• Textiles classes
• Knitting Club
• Poets' Breakfasts
• Gigs (Music, Comedy,... you name it!)
• Free Fringe Festival (Annually in August)
• Astronomy Club
• Spiral Scouts International (local level)
• Spaces to curl up with a book or to study
• Indoors and Outdoors spaces to enjoy a cuppa (outdoors coming later this spring)

Monday, 2nd January: Day 2

Lots going on with the home front today.

Mondays are always special on the FLYlady programme, it's the "big" focus day on the home that sets the week going on the right foot.
For those not familiar with the FLYlady programme, I'm going to say, here and now - if you're a B.O. (Born Organised) person - someone whose ducks fly in a row without any, or with only minimal help, it probably won't make any sense to you, but for perfectionist S.H.E.s (Sidetracked Home Executives) such as me, it can be a life-changing Godsend!

If you haven't already and you think in any small measure the FLY (Finally Love Yourself) programme would be helpful to you, then you can jump right in over at www.FLYlady.net

Actually, now is a very exciting time over there - this month's habits and everything just happen to be natural pause and restart points (though as FLYlady herself always says, just jump in right now, exactly where you are) and the page has recently had a facelift, so if you have been there before, pop back and have an explore of all the new stuff!

So yes, a large part of today has been a FLYlady "reboot" of upstairs. After all the madness of the festive season etc we're starting over again - see, even after nine-and-a-half years (in two weeks time) of following this excellent programme, life still sometimes requires a pause and reboot moment.
The one thing that I have learnt in all this time is, to accept and TRULY understand that sometimes a job doesn't get done all in one go and that is alright. - So while upstairs is not, this evening, completely perfect, I'm happy with the progress made.

Still, it was a very good opportunity to catch up on some music!

Personally, I love classical while I'm doing domestic stuff and this morning was no exception.

While my absolute favourite in these situations is Delius (particularly Songs From the Paradise Gardens) I try not too put Christophe through the same stuff all the time, so this morning I went rooting about for Mozart's Cello Concerto.
Isn't the new layout of YouTube difficult? Though I daresay we'll all get used to it in time.

Anyhow, having unfortunately found THE worst recording in the world of Elgar's Cello Concerto (I have to be in just the right mood for Elgar myself, otherwise his stuff can have me jumping right out of my skin if I'm not ready for it) I finally found a little gem in this recording of Jing Zhao playing the first movement of the Mozart: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCh8fTtc_J4 - it was positively fantastic!

To complement that, we also played some Rondo Veneziano (Christophe's go-to favourite for such settings), of which, the "Aria di Festa" is particularly good.

So that takes care of the 'music' portion of the day, onward to the creativity. (Incidentally, I got up this morning to find my watch EXACTLY where I'd left it - score one to Mammy:Kitten Nil!)

So this is this afternoon's offering (fore-shortened session due to a rather prolonged, but wonderful catching-up natter with my wicked, amazing friend Kim)
I'm afraid that the photo isn't brilliant today - I've just, this evening (after I could've done anything about it) discovered that it's right what they say about regular batteries and digital cameras - DEFINITELY a false economy!) so this picture will just have to hold it until I can take a better one.

As you can see, I've added the first border to yesterday's piece. I opted for a soft lilac in a "baby" type DK yarn on size 4mm needles. (Incidentally, if anyone has a reliable link for translating European and American sizes, please go ahead and pop it up - it's always coming up and I'm never quite sure).

In this instance, I've opted for adding the border straight to the previous block, rather than stitching them together - it's just a personal preference thing really, I'm not convinced to date that there's a huge amount between the two techniques as far as strength.

The one thing I did slip up on and had to remind myself of, so it may be useful to mention here was, if you're going to use this technique, where you're essentially picking up and knitting the cast-off (bound-off in American parlance) stitches, it's important to either leave a longer end on the cast-off, or start in the other corner of the cast-off row to prevent the cast-off stitches coming undone.
However, if like me, you slip-up and they do begin to come loose, the first rule of knitting comes into play: DON'T PANIC!

simply catch the loose stitches on the non-working needle and continue knitting along and nobody will ever know (unless you tell them). - Seriously, see if you can detect which corner it happened on with mine.

In fact, put your guesses in the comment section, where corner 1 is top left of the picture, corner 2 is top right, corner 3 is bottom left and corner 4 is bottom right - and then the first one who gets it right will have a prize!

So there we have it. Short and sweet as days go and with the Knotty Knitters (Ballinamore's Knit Club) not back until next Tuesday, tomorrow's creativity will have to be a little more home grown.

Now that gives me an idea . . .