Tuesday, 3rd January: Day 3

Light and Dark

- that seems to be very much the theme for today!

We got power for the first time today since 03.00 at around 14.00, only to loose it again from 17.00 - 20.00 and gone.

We're the lucky ones though - there are still 6000 homes in the ROI tonight & at least we have the fire whereas many of them have converted to electric/gas run off electric heat too.

So today has been gloriously low tech and has allowed for a variety of creative outlets. (Though today's horoscope advised taking a day off - just pottering around at home has to count)

Quick update on the watch situation - again it wasn't stolen in the night, but when I picked it up this morning, the little dowel fell off and completely vanished. I guess the weight of the clasp on it was too much. So as a theoretical exercise, I'm plotting some alternatives in my head today.
Other cranial creativity today has included development work on the first two fundraisers I want to do this year: A 3Ds night, my own invention. - Everybody shows up with 3Ds with them (namely Donation, Drink, Dessert) - we provide nibbly bits - nuts, crisps etc and then the "dinner" portion of the evening comprises everyone gets to taste as many puddings etc as they want. After that, we sell off the remaining desserts in takeaway tins for say 50c a throw, or gift them in exchange for an honesty box donation.
The second thing I want to do (which Christophe's said he will help with) is a murder mystery evening - so watch this space!

*********

Today's bursts of outdoor creativity started with a 'Mystery Rose'. (left)

We already have our '50c Mystery Rose' the other side of the door - I brought it two winters ago and the woman in the shop only charged me 50c for it because she said it would never grow. It's flowered pretty much non-stop since and seems to be trying to decide whether to be a climber or a standard, or something in-between.

So when the next-door Pitbull pup, Archie, nicked my Rowan Tree Sapling that I was gifted for Yule and chewed it to death while we were away and no-one was looking, we headed out to the post--xmas sale at the garden centre (Ardcarne, in Boyle, Roscommon). Now they're brilliant all year round - one of the best I've ever known, but this time of year is particularly fantastic to be in any garden centre as they often reduce to virtually nothing the touch-and-go plants and as long as you're willing to take your chances you can get some real beauties!

This guy just took my fancy - we wanted something that would prickle young pup if he tries it on again - check! (I'm not into animal cruelty, but a bit of a self-inflicted prickle on the nose might just teach him to leave my plants alone!). He was on his own, alone and unlabelled at the end of the run of scrambler roses (my bet's on creamy with perhaps some pink, I'm not sure) and he reached out and grabbed me by the cardi, so that was that.

Incidentally, because people sometimes ask: I have no particularly special, scientifically proveable method with my touch-and-goes, but I am a huge believer in talking to plants (and trees and animals come to that) and so what I do do is I talk to the plant, ask it if it would llike to come home with me and explain that it will be given a nice patch and then has two choices - to grow or to die. I tend to talk to them on the way home and while planting them, all the while putting out loving thoughts to make them feel 'fussed'. Then I just talk to them and treat them as normal while I go about the place.

Next thing, was the Holly we had over the mantelpiece at Yule.

It was just about beginning to curl up a little at the edges and look a little dry, so the same procedure with that - thanked it for looking so pretty, offered it space in the garden and just pushed the sprigs in to a depth of 5-10cms (about 2-4 inches) depending on the size of the sprig.

Right about then, the power came back on and I got so distracted, I forgot to go back out and get a picture until it was almost dark (silly me!), so I popped out again with Christophe's head torch he uses for his astronomy and got this shot (left) - I'll try and remember to get another one in daylight tomorrow.

********

...and now, for the "piece de resistance" (sorry, I can't make the e-grave thing work on here!):

On the knitting front, this is the progress on the famous sofa throw.

With all the excitement with the on-again-off-again power, I forgot to find batteries for my camera, so this is once more taken on Christophe's video camera which doesn't do as much justice in colour unfortunately.

In the afternoon brown-out, I had a flash of inspiration.

Perhaps because I'd been reading about tonight's Quadrantid Meteor Shower (which promises to be AMAZING this evening - http://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/earthskys-meteor-shower-guide?fb_comment_id=fbc_10150099997031478_20101549_10150456976291478) suddenly I had this thought that the next layer would look fabulous as a starburst!

I had hoped to finish at least the North, South, East, and West points as I'm normally pretty good at knitting without looking, but oddly enough, knitting in the virtually dark, with limited firelight is somehow harder (I'll have to practice!) so by the time my hands (and eyes) were saying "enough", I'd only done the North point, - still, I think that's rather an achievement - especially as Christophe says he had to wake me up in mid flow at one point as I had dosed off and the needles were still at it. . .

The cardinal points will all be in this same peacock-aqua. - It's not exactly in the colour scheme, but the gold I have for the other four points was looking like it might overpower the centre somewhat, so I decided to use a complimentary shade to balance it out.


Tune in again tomorrow for a likely shortened, but hopefully still jam-packed installment!

PS - I forgot an item off the original list, I'll add it back momentarily.

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 . . .