Friday 26th April

1 This morning all I wanted to do was return to hibernation

Daughter's Drawing

Preferably with a hot drink, box of chocolates, book, blanket, hot water bottle....

Last night I struggled to get to sleep because my feet were cold - once I wrapped them up in an extra layer of duvet they warmed up and I managed to drop off. To sleep, I mean.

We had said, last week, or maybe the week before that it was heading for time to swap to a lighter weight duvet after getting too hot a few times. Now I'm glad we didn't. 

Converting my pyjamas top from 'pull over my head style' to buttons didn't go well. Cutting the two pieces of edge tape I used to the same length would have been the biggest improvement- what was I thinking? Was I even thinking? At Ang's suggestion I have sent off for some lightweight iron-on interfacing. 

I'll still be able to wear the top. It will look fine in the dark.

My bean sprouting jars arrived today. I started off with the traditional jam jar and muslin system,

 I started mung beans last night in the trad way and then transferred them to the new jars, 

Mung beans on the left and alfalfa on the right. Now I need to work out where to put them, somewhere out of direct sun, not in the way, but somewhere handy for the twice-daily rinsing with tepid water. The lids are a fine metal sieve to make changing the water easy, the stand makes sure they drain and the tray catches the drips. Perfect. 

Thursday 25th April

 Oh me oh my, it is SO COLD outside.

The only gardening I did was to start a jar of mung bean sprouts - indoors. 

Although my gardener came, and dead-headed and weeded and generally tidied up everywhere. She's squeezed a few more plants into the cold frame and shut the lid. The keen gardener next door has wrapped up all the tender new shoots on his hydrangeas in a fleecy tent.

I did go out for a short toddle up and down outside in the afternoon, peering at the neighbour's gardens. Our neighbours on the other side have masses of azaleas in bloom, in every shade of pink. It makes for a very vibrant display  and every Bush was covered in busy busy bees.

Those little twins were out again later, with a slightly older sister. The twins are still so busy just managing to stagger along without falling over that they have no control of which direction they go in; it just depends on where their short little legs take them. Father was running in every direction at once, until mother appeared to help out!

Wednesday 24th April

Evening All!

More tidying has happened, and it s very satisfying. There are so many 'methods', 'hacks', call them what you will. Earlier this year I was partway through the 'Scavenger Hunt' method,and that was pretty good fun; it consisted of selecting categories, like particular cupboards or drawers, or 'kitchen utensils', 'books', 'clothes', and then removing 10 items from that category to Out Of The House, recycling, charity shop, rubbish, whatever. It was going pretty well too, until I was rather overtaken by events and called a halt. Or rather, a halt happened.

Now I have just read about '365' decluttering; every day you sort out one item to go into the charity box or the recycling box or the rubbish box. The suggestion is that you could extend this by also tidying away one item every day - presumably this is above and beyond the usual every tidying? Still, that would be 365 items at least evicted from the premises, and another 365 found and placed into permanent homes within the premises. I rather like the idea.

I'll start tomorrow...  

Daughter's Drawings - birds on a branch 

 

One of the bits of decluttering/tidying, that was started yesterday, but not finished yet, involved my daughter's drawings. I was salvaging them from one of her old exercise books as I thought they were much too good to throw away. I asked her about sharing her drawings and she said she would much rather that I didn't share the ones from her A-level exercise book but I could share these from a blog I used to write. Just about all the drawings were done by her after she finished Uni and was looking for 'what next?'. Art was one of her subjects (always has been, actually) so I persuaded her to do the artwork and blog design (with my son).

 The blog is still alive - www.themusicjungle.co.uk - and related to when I was working as a music and piano teacher. It was a place to share all the resources, tips, and tricks that I tripped across. I haven't posted anything to it since 2020 by which time I had already stopped class teaching, but you're welcome to have a look.

This was the very first picture on the blog; it exactly expresses how I felt when starting as a piano teacher, and then as a class music teacher, and when starting up the blog...  

Daughter's Drawings- Into the Unknown

Talking of going into the unknown, I'm about to convert my pyjama tops from 'pull over the head' t-shirts to 'button up the front' t-shirts. I've got as far as cutting down the centre front, and pinning on the bias binding to cover the raw edges, and am now considering my next steps. I reckon it's going to be a job for my trusty Elna sewing machine, bought way back in 1979. Does that make it a vintage model? Not far off!

It has straight stitch, zig-zag and a weird 3-step stitch which if you set it to zig-zag as well is supposed to be good for stretchy fabrics. It will do buttonholes very manually - that takes an enormous amount of practice, and then you have to cut the slit afterwards. We shall see how I get on... tomorrow.