The Decorations are Down

We've still got plenty of Christmas goodies, though less than usual. I guess they'll last maybe another week. Bear may take some biscuits away with him. I got a very boring PricePanda delivery today with lots of cooking foil and a book that will be a great present for a friend's little girl and it came in an amazing box again. Bear decided to take the train back to university. DH is working and I still haven't got the hang of motorways. Besides, the weather is iffy and, to be honest, I'm not sure how well our poor old car would do for several hundred miles at 70mph. Rather than him carrying back all the stuff he brought home, like his laptop and clothes, plus all the stuff he got, like sieves, scales and cooking trays, he's carrying some stuff and we're posting the rest. It makes logical sense, especially with a sturdy box like the one that held the PricePanda goodies. 

I was thinking about Kirsten's comment that she hadn't used eBay and wasn't sure that she should after my experience. To be honest, I can't recommend eBay with a clear conscience because it has lead to some dreadful impulse buys on my part. For example, I once bought a job lot of over a hundred second-hand men's ties. I'd seen someone had made a quilt from suffolk puffs that were made from old men's ties. I quite fancied doing that. I never got around to it, though. I did weave a bag out of strips cut from the ties, and I enjoyed making it. It was all in one piece on a piece of cardboard and it was relaxing to make, but I can't find the YouTube video anymore. 

I still use it to hold dryer balls. Then there was the time that I bought a job lot of broken jewellery for craft, and I did have some fun with that, though I ended up donating about half when I decided that I wasn't using it. But look what I got!

As an aside, I checked and there is a listing at time of typing that has 3.5kg or just over seven and a half pounds of broken costume jewellery for £22 including postage for those who like crafting. It makes far more sense to pick up much smaller lots, but I've never been known for my sense on eBay.

I don't think that I ever got a proper pic of the time I bought a job lot of handbags. It was one of those times when it all got away from me. I wanted one handbag, cheap. There was an inexpensive lot that didn't have many pics but included a small black bag that looked perfect and I got it for around £15, I think - certainly not more than £20 as I never bid much on eBay. When the parcel arrived, it was so crammed with bags that I couldn't lift it and the postman had to drag it to the door. I never got a full tally of the contents, as I unpacked it in front of father and he whisked a good few off for his lady friends at church. The bags that were left, however, lasted me years. 

It's a temptation to buy things for projects that I never get to, which is a real failing of mine. I've been resisting a bundle of rags for a while. Did you know that at time of typing you can buy 10kg of cleaning rags made from old clothes, like winceyette and flannel, in smallish squares, for £14.75 which includes postage? And did you know that there's a YouTube channel called HandyMumLin that has a huge playlist of patchwork sewing ideas that use small pieces of fabric like flannel? I've managed to stay strong so far, but it's touch and go sometimes. 

I'm not doing too bad at resisting eBay these days. Regrettably, I'm failing to resist Temu, which I treat with the same caution - I don't expect miracles and I don't spend a lot of money. I've had some wins and some fails, and I need to stay away.

I've consciously looked for something that made me smile today, and it was the memories of my erratic forays into eBay. There were wins, there were fails, but there was always a story. 

Hugs and good health to all. 

Out of Sorts

If I was a cat, I think that I'd have my ears on backwards - you know, like a cat with their fur brushed the wrong way. I think it's the snow. I always feel sleepy when snow is forecast. It wasn't forecast for last night but I nodded off in the afternoon and then realised that we had been blessed with a scant quarter inch of snow.

I also feel ashamed, because I felt that Christmas wasn't brilliant and it wasn't exactly bad it's just that it wasn't brilliant. There were lots of moments that were flat when they had sparkled in previous years. For example, we got the pack of three joints of meat from Tesco. It's a pack of gammon, beef and turkey joints, all previously slow cooked and tender and all allegedly ready to feed four. Years ago, they amply fed us for a meal, but this year they barely stretched for the three of us. The stuffing that I was anticipating got subsituted for pigs in blankets at the delivery, but we already had sixty of the dratted things stowed away for bear. And the side dishes that I paid extra for were okay but not as good as they have been in the past. The portions were definitely smaller, which is a sign of the times. 

It's not like we had rows or sickness or accidents. We had some really good times, and managed to coax bear to watch Where Eagles Dare with us. DH and I adore the film, but bear has been resistant til now. He's not a fan of films or most tv shows, but he enjoyed it. He and DH had a wonderful time talking about uniforms and the placement of explosives. 

That unwarranted sense of dissatisfaction led to some poor judgement on eBay, and two of the consequences arrived today. 

The small grey balls of yarn are for a kit for a man's hat, which I thought would do well for my brother and I could use the pattern to do another for his partner. The pattern is okay, but the listing promised to include needles. The pattern calls for 4.5mm and 5mm needles. The kit only included 5mm needles.

They're 10 inches or 25cm long and I can't see 93 stitches in aran yarn fitting on them. And that's the problem. There's nothing wrong with it, deep down. I'm confident that the needles will come in useful in a different project and the yarn will work out, but I still feel a little grumpy. 

The multicoloured yarn is supposed to be for a scarf. The pattern calls for a 150g ball of yarn, but I have two lots of 100g. Then the pattern says that I have to take yarn from the outside and knit a couple of rows, then I have to take yarn from the centre of the ball and knit a couple more rows, then back to the first end of what presumably is a long strand of yarn, and I know that this is a recipe for one horrendous tangle. There will be ends everywhere, even if it's supposed to be the same ball of yarn. At least it only needs one size of needle. I could use one of the 100g balls for the 'end that starts on the outside of the ball' and the other 100g ball for the 'end that starts on the inside of the ball' but that would be making the best of things and at the moment I'm stuck in grumpy. 

Bear will be going back to university soon. He's spent most of today studying as he has an exam at 9am on the first day of term. I think he has far more reason to be grumpy, but he seems relaxed enough.

And I think that's why I'm unreasonably grumpy. When he was away, I was using his desk and I got so much writing stuff done. It wasn't just the series for Royal Road, but loads of background stuff and a lot of housewifery admin. It really helped me find my balance. Now he's home, I can't do that, but he's here and that's awesome. When he goes away, I'll be able to do so much more housework and writing, but he won't be here. I need to set up a second desk by the time he comes home for Easter.  

Writing stuff - my series The Guest is being put on substack. I apologise to everyone who is getting a gazillion notifications. It should calm down a little soon. The series is now in three separate places, with Substack trailing behind and the latest instalment on my blog here. 

Hopefully I'll lose the grumpy soon.

Hugs and good health to all. 

Funny Time of Year

I have no idea what to make for dinner tonight. Or tomorrow night. Or New Year's Day. In theory, I should be able to manage with what's in the freezer but we're low on all sorts of stuff. I've got stuff in for meals but I haven't got stuff in for nice meals. I'm writing this around 7.30am and I'm wondering about nipping out now to the shops. I'll hit rush hour, but...

It's just shy of 10am and in a move that will surprise no-one who's read this blog, I'm just back from a trip to Tesco. It was deserted, and I picked up some burgers, some chicken, some fancy cheese for bear and some potatoes - all of them except the cheese were full price. But it means that I can do a 'nice' meal tonight with the extra tray of fancy prepared potatoes that I have needing to be used, and depending on what bear is doing New Year's Eve (which is extremely unlikely to be inside our house), I can do a decent chicken in sauce of some sort. I've got plenty of options for sauce, including ready made and ingredients to make my own from scratch, so I can see what calls. I'm not sure how delicate bear will feel on New Year's Day after a night on the town, but I've got an itch to try sausage and mash pie from What's for Tea. I haven't tried it yet, but it seems like wonderful comfort food. 

This Christmas has felt a little flat. I haven't felt much joy. I've never really been one for Christmas, as my parents used to battle when I was a kid - you can see it here on my blog, which sort of explains it. Bear has been happy to be home, but he's been doing his own thing which includes a fair slice of studying. This means that knitting has happened. I should be working on the impossible jacket, but I thought that my brother could use a scarf and started this.

But then I was browsing eBay (which is always a bad start) and saw an extremely inexpensive knitting kit. The box turned up battered.

And it was part of one of those subscription knitting things. 

The pale blue stuff is for a lacy stole. I cast on, got to the pattern, swore, struggled, swore some more and a load of stitches slid off the needles. It's that crazy fluff stuff and it drove me nuts. 

I absolutely did not feel confident picking up lots of stitches as the dratted yarn stuck to itself as well as the box, my arm, my sweater and everything else it touched. I started again, and while it's a mare to knit, I think the plain knit wide scarf will be lovely and warm as well as light and pretty. I'm not sure what to do with the other balls of yarn. It's meant to be half of a cushion, with the other half coming in a previous box. I'm not sure about that. I could make it up and use a fabric backing, but the colours don't call to me. They don't look like they'd be warm as part of hats and scarves for the Mission for Seafarers either. I'll keep thinking. The kit was extremely inexpensive, but I still have a feeling that I've wasted my money.

Writing stuff - authors are encouraged to market their work and at this time of year, all the marketing gurus are enthusing about showcasing plans for upcoming work. I haven't got a clue what's going to happen. I refuse to try and predict anything. The latest instalment of The Guest went up yesterday on my blog here and that's all I'm will to guarantee. 

I'm also posting a lot on Substack. I started on there as you can use it as a newsletter, but I'm adding a few of the posts from my blog, so apologies if you've subscribed and are getting hammered by notifications. It should settle down soon. 

Hugs and good health to all.  

Still Unravelled

My sleep is now so out of kilter that I don't know what way is up. When DH and I went to feed the crows on Saturday, I had had something like four hours sleep in three days and he had just drank a load of standard coffee after months of decaf. If we had been stopped by police, we would have been tested for everything as we were not in any sort of normal frames of mind. 

But yesterday I had a win. Tesco are doing cheap veg, so 15p for bags of carrots and parsnips and also for swedes and bunches of broccoli. It's not as good as Morrison's 5p per bag, but I'm not going to Morrisons at this time of year if I can help it and there are no delivery slots at all. When I had my standard Tesco order, I added it in. I may have gone a little overboard. Yesterday I made soup. 

I cut up a bag of carrots, a bag of parsnips, a swede, and half a bag of onions. After stirring them up with oil, tumeric and cumin, it filled quite a lot of my big pan before I even added the stock and lentils. 

I dug out some frozen garlic when I sorted out the freezer ready for the Christmas delivery. I bunged in four lumps as I thought that the quantity could stand four cloves of garlic. 

Then I checked the packaging. Each block is the equivalent of four cloves of garlic, according to the packaging. I considered my options. The soup is meant to be healthy, and garlic is good for you, but as I wasn't expecting vampires, I decided against the equivalent of sixteen cloves of garlic and removed three of the chunks. I won't be getting the frozen garlic again. I rarely cook things that need four cloves of garlic and I prefer garlic granules anyway, especially if I'm cooking chunks of potato stirred through a little oil and garlic then microwaved. 

I added stock and lentils, gave it a nice long simmer, blended, and then froze ten decent portions of healthy soup. I was trying to tot it up. It went something like, veggies total 95p, stock cubes were 30p (three of the Tesco own brand), I guess maybe 50p of lentils and goodness knows how much I should allow for the garlic and spices. I also finished off a bottle of garlic oil which had been lingering, and I've no idea how to guesstimate that. I think that it counts as a bargain, regardless. Apart from the pennies saved, it's ten lots of 'I don't have to think about what to have for lunch'.

I'm on something of a 'use it up' kick and I've got a great recipe for tonight that I'll share if it comes off. When I get back to my planner, I need to have a section where I keep track of food that I need to use up. Last night we had meatballs with tagliatelle and sauce. The sauce was because I wanted to use up the freeze dried veggies and I had a stock of passata that had been ignored, so I made those the start of a nice Sunday dinner. 

Writing stuff - this isn't flourishing due to the lack of sleep, but today's episode of The Guest is here.

Hugs and good health to all.

PS I went over this a couple of times, because lack of sleep affects my ability to use words, and I found some very strange sentences. I think I caught all the weirdness, but I apologise for any that slipped through. 

A Success!

Do you remember a while ago that I posted about the cute owl candles that DH had bought me and how I wanted to save the containers? The post is here. I had an inspiration. I invested in some artificial succulents from Temu.

They're currently around £18 for ten, which means that they were an extravagance that I absolutely didn't need - but I really wanted. And it's always a gamble getting stuff from Temu. Some of it is absolutely top quality and wonderful and some of it truly isn't. These don't look too band and if you take them out of the concrete pots, they fit almost perfectly into the owls after the candle has burned out.

The one on the right is the unburned candle. I think that the succulent idea works great. They can be dotted around the house in tiny corners and safely ignored. Of course, that leaves me with the tiny concrete pots.

Which look like they ought to be useful, but I have no idea what. Because they look useful, I'll probably donate them if I can't find a use for them soon.

I'll be back with a proper post tomorrow.

Writing stuff - This week's instalment of The Guest is here. I'm working on a new edition of Cats in the Bible with a couple of extra stories, and for those who have read it, do you think this is a good cover?

For those who haven't, it's funny stories starring the cats who used to own me. Because I was always tickled by the idea that there was no mention of cats in the Bible, I put up a Bible quote at the top of each chapter that could apply, so if I post Genesis 10:9 He was a mighty hunter before the Lord; therefore it is said, “Like Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord.” Then there's a fair chance of a mouse being chased in the story. I hope to get it all finished by the end of January.

Hugs and good health to all. 

Entertaining Bargains

Bear is home! And he's happy to be home! I swear that he's grown an inch, he's looking happy and relaxed and currently asleep. I know that there are so many on here who understand - there has been a gap and now there isn't. 

As I plan to be spending most of my energy on him today, I thought that I'd nip on quickly as I just received a parcel. I used to get a load of stuff from Approved Food but after a while, I just wasn't seeing the stuff that I wanted. Well, I saw a link to Price Panda, I was curious, I visited the site and the rest is history.

I particularly like the black fabric washer sheets which you add to a laundry load of black clothes and wash as normal to revive them. Bear only wears black so I consider these a boon. Anyway, I spent a chunk on little dehumidifiers, which I had been looking for, car mats, broken biscuits, a dozen bars of Pear's soap, some fancy teas that I had been considering for a while but never got to, and all sorts of bits. 

This may sound silly, but for me, one of the the best things was the packaging. The delivery driver commented on how sturdy and well packed the box was, which I thought was unusual, but it's a really good box. I shouldn't hoard cardboard boxes, but I'm tempted with this as it's just such a good size and strength. Someone in that company committed to serious packaging and spent the extra to get stuff printed on it. I think that it's genius marketing.

The packaging encourages you to share hauls on places like Instagram to get freebies and discounts, and what great marketing! I'm only sharing it here, so I'm not going to try tagging anything, but it impressed me.

Now bear is watching back one of the lectures he attended as he has exams the week he goes back so he says he has a lot of studying. I'm going to grab a bite to eat and then settle down with my knitting to enjoy hanging out. 

Hugs and good health to all.

Ravelled Sleeve of Care

Shakespeare talks about sleep knitting up the ravelled sleeve of care, and my sleep-sleeve is currently completely unravelled. Last night was something of an example. I actually managed to fall asleep just before 1am, which was a miracle. I woke up around 4am, which is when I usually fall asleep, tried to sleep until 5am, got up, found out some of my stories had been pirated on an audio site, tried to go back to sleep at 7am, got up again 7.30am, was nodding off at 11am but as soon as I tried to sleep properly I was wide awake. I managed two hours in the middle of the afternoon, I've accomplished very little and I feel like something that the cat would refuse to drag in. 

There is still a certain amount of squelch in the dining room but it's reducing. I'm not sure if it's because of the dehumidifiers or because it's stopped raining, but I'll take what I can get. When I wandered down around 6am this morning there was a slug in the middle of the carpet that looked like it wished it had brought water wings. It didn't help my mood. I suppose it's getting closer to this.

Photo by Jeff DeWitt on Unsplash

Small isles of dry carpet are appearing, but rain is forecast so I'll see how it goes.

One thing that I have managed is to get thoroughly depressed about audio books. Good narrators will make a story come alive in ways that the page can't manage, but they are rightly expensive. On one of the main platforms for authors to convert their ebooks into audiobooks, prices start at 2p per word. Out of the London Mist comes in at around 60,000 words, or £1,200 at the minimum. I don't have that sort of money, though I'm sure that they earn it.  

A lot of authors are using AI, which makes me uncomfortable. Partly I don't like the idea of putting people out of work. There is also the whole worry that it wouldn't sound right. I've had enough problems with spellchecker. I don't want the AI butchering pronounciation and syntax in audible form as well, and I know myself well enough to know that I wouldn't have the concentration to properly listen to an AI recording to pick up all the bits that were missed. 

I'm not doing anything to take it down at the moment. Apart from not being able to get the dratted thing to work, it's not costing me anything and may possibly get me leads that will get me a few pennies. The site has all the stories from Royal Road but nothing from Amazon. I've always known that the stuff on Royal Road was vulnerable, but I've been treating it as a sort of gym to get me writing and to get another place to have my writing name on the internet. I don't put anything on there that I'm planning on charging for, although I can imagine me taking some stuff down, tidying it up, getting a halfway decent cover and then bunging it on somewhere like Smashwords. Not everyone takes that view, however, and some authors on Royal Road make money from their writing there, and it's taking income from them. 

Bear is coming home tomorrow. I think I will be feeling a lot better.

Hugs and good health to all.