A Long Day

I was up early. Bear was going to a university open day and had to leave early. DH was driving him the 250 miles there and back, which was heroic of him, and I wanted to see them off.

Do you remember that I had the check tyre light come on and the garage replaced a tyre? The check tyre light came on before they'd gone a mile, but they were fine. My car, Red, apparently drove wonderfully on the motorway, zoomed along at 70mph and, as they filled up just after they left the house, did it all on around a quarter of a tank of petrol. And with the check tyre light on. 

I've spent the day struggling with some writing, but I did take two pics of sprouting seeds. Another sprout is showing next to the first.

And I suspect more may be coming. There are also hints for the cayenne that I planted in the soggy coir.

I have nowhere to put the plants if they all sprout. Though, to be honest, that's not a bad problem to have. 

Bear had an amazing time. He had a chance to look around accomodation and make some decisions about what he wanted to apply for. DH said that the facilities and buildings were amazing. I hope that he gets there. It's his first choice now, and if he gets the same marks that he's been getting for the last two years then he should be fine.

They got home around 6.20pm and then I took bear out at 7pm as he wanted to go to the pub quiz. It was the last one as new management were taking over. The same gang had been going there since July 2023, and they aren't sure where they'll end up going, if anywhere, so it was a big deal. What with one thing and another, I didn't get to pick him up until 11pm. I am now offically exhausted and so is bear. And I suspect that I must have used nearly an eighth of a tank just on the 30 miles or so I drove in town traffic. 

Hugs and good health to all.

Dull as the Weather

Another day when nothing much happened. I'm struggling with some writing and I've been ignoring anything else. 

I had a Tesco delivery today, an extra one as it's half term, and I had a rummage and added this to the order.

It's sold as a propagator and ideal. I was mentally working out where I could put it, when I realised that the individual little pots could come out and they would be fine. I plan on saving the pots and reusing them, though with a little luck I may be able to overwinter some of the chillies (if any survive my 'care') as the house stays warm. 

If all the seeds germinate, I'm going to be struggling for room, though I know a few people who would accept a donated plant. 

And my dratted keyboard is playing up again. It's the letter 'F' that's sticking which is an absolute nuisance but not as bad as 'N', which has recovered nicely. 

Hugs and good health to all. 

I Planted Some More Chillies

I can tell that this blog is going to be sooooo about chillies, at least for the next week or so, and then heaven knows how it will go. 

We have one sprout!!!

It may not look much, but I'm thrilled! There were five seeds planted in there, so I'm feeling okay about buying extra seeds as we may need them. 

There were five seeds left over from the original pack, so I got them out, assembled the plant pots and settled down. I was quite pleased with the pots - they fit on our tiny windowsill. 

So I planted up the five seeds. I couldn't remember what they were called, so I labelled it Chilli One.

I planted two or three to a pot and by the time I'd planted the seeds from Chilli One and the Habanero and Cayenne seeds from this pack

I had eight little pots and I'd run out of the little saucers. They're on the windowsill now, and I'm wondering what I can do about the saucers for the rest. I may even try little freezer bags or sandwich bags, just to keep the damp off the windowsill. The pots aren't getting soaked, so it's not like they're going to shed a lot of water.

Those who have a track record of actually growing things will find this hilarious, but it's such a big adventure to me, especially as it's the highlight of the day. I'm still full of cold and huffing and puffing and not moving much. But at least I got those few chillies planted. 

Hugs and good health to all. 

All Sort of Grey

The weather has been pretty grey and dull and that seems to be the pattern for today. 

We went to feed the corvids. There were a lot of magpies, maybe as much as a dozen, and there were plenty of crows as well, all happily diving on the food. 

We were a little subversive while we were there. We scattered some seed balls around the edges of the car park. These are little balls of clay containing wildflower seeds, a little nutrition and some chilli to deter predators that are supposed to be just thrown onto the soil and contain wild flowers. You can get them from Seedball and we threw out the bee and bat friendly balls in places where they don't mow. Nothing may happen - there are a lot of birds around, not to mention all the voles and similar that must be in that overgrown place - but it would be lovely to go back and see flowers that we encouraged. 

While I was there, I was knitting the scarf with the fancy wool and alpaca yarn. I looked at it and realised that I would never wear it. It just wasn't working for me. I considered about selling or donating the yarn, but decided to knit one of the scarves for the Mission to Seafarers. That way, I'd get the very real pleasure of knitting with the yarn and I'd have the comfort of someone out there hopefully benefitting from it. I had got this far...

Then I unravelled it and now I'm so far...

And I'm finding it wonderfully relaxing to knit. 

I asked myself - what do I enjoy about knitting? It's not the finished project. It's the process of knitting. It's not the destination but the journey. I'm going to try and keep to that yardstick to make decisions about the whole knitting thing. 

Hugs and good health to all. 

Not Quite Busy

There was a parcel that needed to go to a friend in the Netherlands. I've not been in a fit state to do much, but although I didn't have much sleep last night, I was feeling better so I set off in a hurry to get to the Post Office at the Co-op to post the parcel - the staff are always lovely there and the car park there usually has a space, even if it is a wickedly sloped surface. I shot out of the door at 9.10am, after the traffic for the school near us had cleared, raced up the road, and the whole building was closed and shuttered. There was building stuff around, so I hope that it will re-open, as the store itself is so useful - it's close, has a reasonable range for a corner shop, has a Post Office Counter, has a car park, stocks ethical, good quality food and is nice and clean. Having said that, I had to belt back because the Tesco grocery delivery was due at 10am. 

The check tyre pressure light came on in the car, which doesn't always mean anything, but the car was driving 'soft' so as soon as I'd got the groceries away, I tootled down to In n Out Garage. They don't mind you dropping in if it's an iffy tyre (it was), and they have always let me wait with my knitting. Today I waited. And waited. And waited. And waited.

The tyre had to be ordered, and should have been there by three. However it got stuck in traffic. I checked Google maps and there were four accidents between Junction 27 and Junction 25 of the M62! I hope that they were all minor accidents, but the roads were dreadfully backed up. So the tyre, that absolutely should have been there for 3pm, got there at 4.30pm. I had got to the garage at 1pm. It was practically 5pm when everything was finished and paid for - too late to try and find a new post office. I spent effectively four hours intermittently knitting and reading. 

The staff were lovely! They kept me up to date, made sure that I could help myself to tea and coffee and even offered me a Tunnock's tea cake. The one pic I managed to take today was of their drinks machine which was a source of free and unlimited hot chocolate for me. 

At least I got some knitting done. 

Tomorrow I should have some better pics - I got a delivery today with plant pots in, so I hope to progress with those dratted chillies!

I threw together a quick dinner - frozen veggie sausages, frozen potato sort of wide fries, frozen peas, and gravy. It took twenty minutes and the only thing that cost full price was the gravy granules. The freezer may be full, but it's something of a resource and I've been trying to stuff it wisely. 

Then I've zoned out for the rest of the evening. Hopefully I'll sleep better tonight.

Hugs and good health to all. 

Lacklustre

Today was as lacklustre as yesterday. I didn't get around to posting as I was out late. I took bear to his pub quiz, then I hung around in a car park with my knitting until it was time to pick him up. It's one of those things where I could drop bear off, drive home, sit around for a short while, maybe half an hour, then go back out, drive back, pick bear up and drive home, with each leg 12 to 15 miles, depending on the route. Or I could drop him off, settle down in a nearby car park and knit and read in peace and quite until it's time to pick him up, only travelling maybe a total of four or five miles depending on the car park. So the only thing of note that I've managed is some cold weather knitting. I decided to abandon the shrug, start again with the blue yarn and I'm hoping that I'll get a blanket out of it.

As a reminder to myself, here is the hat I knitted years ago. It's still soft, fluffy and wonderfully warm. 

So some of my knitting really does come in useful. I snuggled down with a blanket I knitted on my lap, the fluffy hat on my head and a sense of peace. 

Writing stuff - I think that I wrote that there was a call for submissions where the guidelines were wonderful but I only had a day or two to write the story, and I wasn't expecting it to be accepted? It wasn't accepted and I understand why. It was set in the world of Out of the London Mist and it's hard for something like that to fit an anthology as a standalone story. I'm half tempted to bung it on my writing blog, but it's near enough 4,000 words which is a big story to read online like that. I could definitely expand it to novella size, which is around 10,000 words and publish it on Amazon, but I'm easily distracted and it would potentially take me away from other stuff that I'd like to do. I found four places where I could submit stories from Authors Publish magazine which is a free ezine and I've found very helpful. As ever, I find a potential place then try and write to order, which means I've got around 30,000 words to write before the end of the month, plus some interesting research, just for those. By the time I've finished those (if I even get it finished), I'll probably have forgotten all about it. Whatever I decide, if I do something, I'll share. 

Hugs and good health to all. 

Lacking a Silver Lining

I slept through a Tesco delivery this morning. I'm not sure how I managed it. It was a whisker early, just before 9am, and DH was an absolute saint and brought it all in, stowed the frozen and chilled and let me sleep. I feel dreadful about it.

I only wanted the delivery because I'm not good about going out at the moment. You can find me by tracking the tissues that I seem to be shedding all over the house. I'm on my fourth box at the moment. I needed a few bits and I took advantage of some coupons - not as good as Bless, though. I managed to take the bill from £53.17 to £48.56. It was stuff that I wanted/needed so I'm not too stressed about getting extra. 

I haven't been productive today. The only instance of productivity is checking in on a publishing house. There was a call for submissions and the formatting is quite strict - and in inches. My set up is in metric. I checked to see if they'd accept my 'near as I could manage it' formatting and they were really sweet getting back to me. Even if they don't accept my yet-to-be written story, I'll probably still buy that issue and recommend it here. They were lovely. Publishers aren't always lovely to writers that they don't know so when I get a kind response, it makes a difference. It's not much of a silver lining on a day when I've been spectacularly ineffective.

As I haven't taken a pic, I had a rummage.

It took this back in 2021, when I could walk so much better. It made me think of all sorts of stories. I need to get back to that. 

I'm determined to do more tomorrow.

Hugs and good health to all.