Relieved

Bear usually goes to a pub quiz on Wednesday nights and I am usually happy to give him a lift. It's around a twenty mile round trip but what tends to happen is that I drive ten miles to drop him off, call in at Tesco, knit in a car park for a while and then pick him up to drive ten miles home. But when bear told me that he wasn't going tonight, all I could feel was relief. There are some seriously steep roads on the route and the weather forecast was full of warnings about travel and black ice. The weatherman said that temperatures of -9C (which is around 15F and pretty much unheard of here).

I'd already put extra salt and sand around the path as we had a delivery and I worry for the drivers. I was so glad that they came. Bear said the paths from the bus stop were like glass. He had two tests today and I think the few yards between the door and the bus stop were more nerve wracking.

Sleep issues continue and now my bladder has decided that it only works during the hours of darkness. I am deeply unimpressed by the whole business and I'm effectively sleep typing as it's nearly 9pm at time of typing and I've been up since 1am after a curtailed sleep so I'm barely bumbling along. I'm trying to hold out another hour before bed in an effort to reset my sleep patterns but it's hard. Mind you, not having the brain space to do much at all means I've done quite well with the scarf for the Mission for Seafarers.

I'm just before the halfway mark. The pattern calls for 200g and I'm almost at the end of the first 100g. 

I'll be glad when this cold snap ends. It must be hard on the local wildlife and it's certainly not easy on our heating bills. Bear got a heated blanket for his birthday which, to me, is an amazing gift and he is suitably grateful, especially in this weather. 

Hugs and good health to all. 

Tea

I didn't post yesterday because I fell asleep. I'm currently just working with the erratic sleep. 

I finally got around to trying out the Campfires and Vampires tea. 

I didn't really like it much as it tasted very flowery, but that may be because I'd had it in the cupboard for a while. I'll try to remember to take a pic of the cat tea mug. I got it from Temu and it's a mug with a china tea strainer insert and the little cat head is a saucer to put the tea strainer while you drink. I think it's meant for making tea on the go, as it's got a sweet case and I could absolutely do that with my car kettle and a little pouch of loose tea. It would be incredibly civilised while I fed the crows!

I've been nibbling away that is the utter chaos that is the kitchen, dining room and walk in cupboard. DH reorganised a cupboard and I can tell that he's wanting to keep going, so I'm trying to clear the decks for him. With my back being bad, I can only do so much at a time. Today, instead of reading my kindle books on my phone, I took my knitting down and I would do a little, knit a row or two, do a little more, then a few more rows of knitting and I've done okayish. 

It's still cold here. Most of the snow has gone, apart from on our street, but the ice is really tricky. I'm staying emphatically indoors. I've been considering growing some chilli plants on the windowsill. DH and bear love their pickled chillis and I'm sure that if I was half way competent then I could grow enough to save money, even allowing for the cost of seeds and compost. However I am not halfway competent. I'm weighing up my options. 

Bear had a snow day yesterday and a short day today but he has two tests tomorrow and I think that he's had a brutal return to school after the holiday. He's just working with it, and he has exams immediately after the half term holiday and then after Easter. Then, of course, the A levels. 

Writing stuff - I'm back on my writing blog as well and the latest from the White Hart is here. The time I took away has given me a chance to think a few things through, so watch this space for some new goings on there!

Hugs and good health to all. 

All About the Weather

Nothing much has happened today. I've been checking the weather, knitting and napping erratically. 

Early this morning, the snow looked like this. 

But it pretty quickly progressed to this.

Bear is fervently hoping for a snow day tomorrow but it's unlikely. 

I put off the Morrisons grocery delivery that I had planned for tomorrow as I feel uncomfortable asking for deliveries in the snow that aren't necessary. It should in theory be better weather, but I'm keeping an eye on things. The two main things that I want are salad and easy peeler citrus, both for DH. If the worst comes to the worst, I can nip out late tomorrow to pick them up. Or poor DH can muddle through without them, just for a day or two. 

Hugs and good health to all. 

Sleep Continues Complicated

It's long, complicated and dull but the highlights are that I managed to sleep from around 9.30pm roughly to 3.00am, accidentally texted DH as I was drifting off again at 4.00am and the guilt kept me awake until 1.30pm when I flaked out and slept until 6.00pm. By this time, bear had gone out.

Bear had been invited to go ice skating, and he went and had a marvellous time. However, snow was forecast and we're not set up for snow. I had some concerns. The parts of the UK that get snow regularly are fine when the white stuff falls, but here in Leeds, we don't see much at all. I think we didn't see any last winter, and the roads and cars are just not set up to accomodate it. Even the animals aren't accustomed. We fed the crows and magpies this morning and it was hilarious to see magpies skidding as they landed because they didn't see the thin film of ice and weren't used to it. The magpies are usually so skilful and deft with their flying and landing that it was funny to see them come in for their usual pinpoint landing and then slide another few inches. 

Bear did text asking for a lift, but the texts didn't come through, so he ended up getting a bus. The first few flakes started falling pretty much as he got home. The papers and the BBC have been muttering about Snowmaggedon, but it currently looks like this.

Mind you, the worst of it is supposed to fall overnight and the local council have cancelled their bin collections because of the expected conditions. I shall wait and see.

Now I'm all topsy turvey with the sleep so I think I'll head up to bed and see what wonders happen this time. 

Hugs and good health to all.

One Percent

We are already one hundredth of the way through the year, that's one percent of 2025. I'm trying to be mindful and not let time slip by, and I think that's not a bad way of looking at it. One percent of a year is around three and a half days, I guess, and I'll keep using it to keep me moving.

I haven't achieved so much today. My sleep continues to be erratic so I managed 11.30pm until 3.30am and then I couldn't stay awake and I was so tired that it hurt so I ended up sleeping 11.30am to 4.00pm and just about found the willpower to drag myself out of bed to make dinner. It wasn't a brilliant dinner but just nice sausage with curly fries from the freezer, peas (with a stock cube thrown into the cooking water) and gravy. The men enjoyed it a great deal, though, so I'm happy. 

One thing that I managed was taking in the Tesco grocery delivery. I also decided to keep a track of prices using the delivery notes. Because the invoice doesn't print nicely I ended up typing up a list of goods and their prices.

I'm keeping the invoices in a file so I can compare prices. A lot of my shopping is done online so if I see a sale for, perhaps, pasta, then I can stop and compare the prices I've paid previously and see if it's really a good deal. The 'previous orders' saved on my account don't go back indefinitely and typing it all out helps me remember the usual price and good prices for when I'm in the store. I'm hoping that it will also help me keep track of what's in the cupboards as I'm thinking about things as I type them up. 

I'm also tracking my spending. I'm not attempting to make a budget, but just seeing where I'm spending and where I can cut back. Bear will need us to help him with money if, as is likely, he gets to university. It's only the first week, but it stopped an impulse buy of a hat knitting kit as I didn't want to have to write the info down. It was enough of a pause to remind me that I had a gazillion bags of yarn already together with needles and a great patten for a hat so I did not need to add to it. 

Another paperwork type thing is that I finally remembered to add some strands of yarn to the knitting notebook. It's perhaps the best gift this Christmas, and I'm using it to slow down my impulse knitting. There's a space to tape in fragments of yarn in a project.

I like the idea of keeping a record so that I can duplicate good ideas and remember the dreadful experiences of bad ideas. 

All this paperwork is really busy work and could be ignored, but I'm hoping that it will keep me more mindful of what I'm doing, and anything that will help is worth trying. 

I'm so tired right now that I'm practically sleep typing and I'm really hoping for a decent night's sleep tonight - wish me luck. 

Ravelled Sleeve of Care

My sleep is all over the place. I'm typing this around 6.30pm and can barely keep my eyes open. However if I stay up then around 10pm I'll be as lively as a spring lamb and be unable to sleep until around 3am. Then I'll end up napping in the middle of the day. But if I go to bed now then the chances of me being wide awake between midnight and 4am are ridiculously high. Grumble. 

I had four hours sleep last night and I was up at 5.30am. I did all sorts of admin up to around 9.30am. I sorted through a load of emails, checked in on my social media and went through the birthdays on my author Facebook page. I pretty much accept everyone there, so now I have a gazillion friends who I don't really know. I've decided that every day I'll go through the birthdays and if they haven't posted for a couple of years then I'll unfriend. Yesterday I went from 72 friends having birthdays to just over 20 after doing this. There weren't so many today, as a lot of people put 1st Jan as a default, but I unfriended someone who I didn't really know and who hadn't posted since 2018. I'm sure that they can find me if they want. I started trying this to keep under the Facebook friends limit, but it's been fascinating over just two days. By the way, if I unfriend you because you don't post or I've slipped, if you're not too offended, please drop a message or put in a friend request. I don't want to lose good friends. I'm just trying to avoid scammers and inactive accounts.

I'm failing with a scarf. I was trying the Lamar scarf pattern and I made a right mess with it. It's ages since I did any cables and knitting 6 stitch cables in rib was a little more than what I'm used to. I managed to drop a load of stitches and pull some out and there was no way I could pick up again. I hadn't got far, thank goodness, so I thought that instead I would knit the scarf from the Mission to Seafarers scarf instead to donate. The Seafarer's scarf is cast on 40 stitches then knit 200g and cast off so I cast on 40 stitches and settled down.

Then I wondered about going up a size. I was knitting the double knitting with the correct size needles, but plain knitting always drapes better if you use a larger needle. I'm considering ripping it out and trying again with the Lamar Pattern but with four stitches in the cable instead of six. I think that I can make the numbers work. I may leave it to one side with the rest of my gazillion unfinished projects and go back to my blanket.

I'm signing off before I start sleep typing.

Hugs and good health to all. 

Happy New Year!

I'm back after taking some much needed time to think about my priorities. It's still a work in progress, but I'm always going to be a work in progress and at least there's a little movement. 

To catch up, bear is now a legal adult. He can now buy a drink in a bar, undertake a legal contract and get married without our approval. He doesn't seem in a rush to do any of that, but I'll keep an open mind. He got a pretty good haul of gifts from family and friends and seems very satisfied. He's studying hard but still finds time for some social life. A few days ago I took him to a party and I'm still recovering from the drive. The party was in the middle of nowhere with an hourly bus service. I was happy to drop him off, and I would again, but with the nights being early this time of year and the weather, well, it was an adventure. I found myself on unfamiliar single track country lanes, twisting and turning around blind corners, in the dark, with the mist coming down. The speed limit was 60mph but I had no shame in dropping to around 25mph when no-one was behind me. As it was, I was holding up traffic for part of the way because I couldn't see what was coming next and I wasn't going to speed up for the sake of it. I was so glad that he got the bus home!

Then there was the 'please pick me up' text at just past midnight after he went to a New Year's Eve party. The weather was foul with the roads running with water. I'd rather drive through that than leave him stranded and I'm grateful that he trusts me to pick him up. DH joined me as we had a few concerns, but everything is fine. 

I finished a blanket. I'm not trying to sell or donate this as it's full of holes and mistakes. I had a nightmare with it and I'm not sure why. At the end, I played yarn chicken and lost. You can see where I ran out of red and had to use a leftover strand of orange.

I've been looking at the 'pantry challenges' on YouTube #threeriverschallenge. It's full of people who grow their own food and have all sorts of wonderful things stashed. I'm not trying that and I already have my next delivery booked for the 3rd of January. However it's a good reminder and I'm planning to make an inventory of what food I have in and make some plans to use everything up. I have a 10kg bag of potatoes (around 22lb) which I'm determined to finish. Yesterday we had Bombay potatoes and they were amazingly wonderful. We've also had Mustard Potatoes from this recipe.  

Writing stuff - it's not much, but I've finally posted on my writing blog with a bit of chat here. 

Hugs and good health to all.