Things are gradually getting back to normal. All our visitors have gone now and, aside from intermittent confrontations in the battlefield of Mum’s unpacking (usually after a landmine discovery of yet another box of china/glassware/towels), peace has descended. All of the fruitcake and almost all the Christmas sweeties have been snarfed and we are gradually making inroads into the cheese mountain (I am on a regime of daily toasties). Dry January was commenced in hope, but immediately abandoned when the lovely Barry the Decorator came to stay. This was a good thing as, after a day in the packing case trenches, dodging multiplying mirrors and surplus chandeliers, a ginger beer just didn’t cut it.
I’m not one for New year resolutions, but I’ve may have made a few bijou planettes. They may or may not come off and I may or may not tell you. However, in a spirit of new year new start I will admit that I have signed up for another series of Pilates classes. On Monday we experimented with “taco feet and avocado hands”. The class’ grasp of Avocado hands theory proved poor and therefore educational aids were handed out. We performed the rest of the exercises in slight bafflement, each clutching two green pears. These were returned at the end of the lesson and I fear that Megan’s girls will have been on guacamole lunches all week. I wonder what will transpire if our “taco feet” are judged wanting next week….? I have also forced myself to look at the bathroom scales. On the positive side, the avoirdupois I could be doing with losing is a nice clean round number. You don’t want to hear about the bad side. There are unlikely to be further updates on this topic.
It’s frosty out, but we’ve not mustered more than the barest sprinkling of snow. Lyra loves this and has been sprinting and scampering round her walks. Mum and I are slithering and sliding in the rear, hoping to make it back to base in the vertical position. In the garden, Keith has been manfully shredding the huge mounds of pruning I gathered over the last year. After two days bone jarring and earsplitting twig chewing, we have garnered maybe three barrowloads of mulch. These will disappear in no time as soon as the soil defrosts enough to get in a quick hoe in (to despatch the (utterly frost resistant) sticky wullie and forget-me-not). Next up will be the last of the herbaceous cutting back and the first of the rose, cornus and hazel pruning (all of which will reflate the shredding pile nicely if Keith can bear it – or provide a splendid bonfire if he can’t). I am itching to get on, but it is so cold I think I’d be numb after tackling just one bush. Time to scope out some thermal gardening gloves methinks….
On the home front, I’m knitting up the leftover wool from Lachlan’s Christmas jumper in the hope that I might just squeak out enough to make a gardening waistcoat. I’ve done the back and one side and I’ll either just make it or be an inch short. In the latter case I shall need to either look out for a Quasimodo shaped friend or rip it all back and start again. As you will appreciate, my fingers are well and truly crossed for the former…. Further curtain making also looms once Ishbel has pondered the fabric samples supplied and measured her windows. Wild talk of crewelwork additions has been approved, much to my surprise. This may prove massively over ambitious – par for the course for me – but I’ve ordered some sample supplies and shall be knocking out some test efforts in due course. If nothing else, this is a perfect excuse to sit by the fire and binge on short needlework videos, which have quite taken over in my affections from cake icing films.
