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I am proud of this picture.

I took it when I went out to Tesco this evening. Bear was complaining that he couldn't find the garlic in his local Tesco, so I thought that I'd share a pic with him. I'm proud because I think that this is the first time I've left the house properly in at least a fortnight, and the odd wander to the bin or to support strimming doesn't really count for much either. We're coming up to the time of year when it's hard for me to do anything, so I forced myself to go out. 

It was late, and the windscreen had already started to get a little icy, but it wasn't a bad run and I need to keep pushing myself. Though I probably won't go out much this week as the weather is looking cold with a non-zero chance of snow. I absolutely do not approve of snow.

I've been concentrating on writing for the last week, more in Writing stuff below, but I've decided that from today, I need to try and find some sort of balance and motivation. Besides, it's only a month before bear comes back from university for the winter break in a month and I want to have the house nice for him. 

If I've understood the weather forecasts correctly, this week is going to be freezing, then next week will be warmer, so I'll get back to the garden next week after the cold has killed off some of the weeds. I guess it's a good time for me to clear things out. I also need to crack on with the knitting as, did I mention? it's cold!

Writing stuff - As I mentioned, I'm taking part in the Writathon with Royal Road. The first big milestone and to get a mention, I had to hit 25,000 words by midnight on 15th November, 9 days after I started. I made it by ten minutes. I spent most of yesterday sitting around in a daze. The words are added in chapters, and each time I completed a chapter for Royal Road, I loaded it onto my writing blog. However I haven't put it on all at once or the notifications would be going crazy and, besides, to make my life easier, I decided that I would schedule them, with a new chapter each week on a Monday. I thought that it would take care of my commitment to posting fiction on Mondays. Once I finish this challenge, I probably won't have to write new stuff for Monday for a while. So far, I'm up to the middle of next February. 

Anyway, this week's instalment for the writing blog is here, but you can read the whole 25,000 so far on Royal Road here. 

Hugs and good health to all. 

I Should Have Known - Mainly Writing Stuff

Who am I kidding, this is practically all writing stuff but it's more about me being an idiot with writing stuff included in the mix. 

It went something like this... I very clearly, absolutely, 100% committed to not writing a novel in November. I put it in black and white in a post here if you want a snicker. I was absolutely and utterly signed up to do loads of editing, tidying, converting and general writing housekeeping this month. Absolutely not writing a novel. Under no circumstances. Not at all!

So, as it happens, Royal Road launched a Writathon to write 55,555 words by 5th of December with a way point on 15th November when particpants need to reach 25,000 words. Of course I signed up! Dammit. 

I'll be honest, it's not looking good at me making the 25,000 words by 15th of November, which is five days away and over 20,000 words to go. However it's not bad for me to make the attempt. I have a huge backlog of ideas and I want to try and write at a faster pace. I can look at this as training, if you like. 

The brutal truth is that I can maybe walk or stand for five minutes without excruciating back pain. I don't have much in the way of current office and tech skills and I have tinnitus which limits my ability to do phone work. Writing is the best chance of me earning money to help bear through university. I doubt I'll make much - most writers don't, especially with all the AI stuff around - but the chances of me making anything are vastly increased if I write loads and publish loads. So I've taken the challenge on.  It won't make me money, but I think that it will be like a gym for the rest of my writing and I'll take it.

I didn't particularly want to mess around with a novel. The next big things for me involve a lot of planning and thinking and I also have a habit of junking the first 25,000 words of any big project so a novel wouldn't be a good idea for me. Besides, Royal Road isn't really set up like that. It's more for things like the White Hart. 

And speaking of White Hart, I wanted something that I could put into that place. I wanted a setting where I could dip in and add a small story every Monday just to keep me mentally moving, even if the rest of the writing was stuck. Then I remembered The Guest which was a failed anthology submission and which I'd kind of liked. So I decided that it would be the start of a new set of stories. And those stories would be perfect for Royal Road. And so, I got started. The first instalment, The Guest, won't count towards the word total, which is fair enough.

Currently, the plan is to publish as I go on Royal Road. The page is here, if you're interested and any honest reviews would be welcome but only if you feel like it. These will look very much like first draft, because that's what they are. However, I've put the first instalment up on my writing blog, here, and each of the chapters will be released one at a time on Mondays, which will probably take it up to the New Year. There won't be much materially changed in these chapters, but I'll scan them over for typos and grammar before they go live on my blog. 

The Guest isn't quite The White Hart. The setting is similar, but not exactly the same, and there'll be a new cast of characters which I hope will be fun. I'd love to hear what you think. 

As for what I'll get up to when it comes to stuff like the garden or housewifery or knitting - who knows? I have no idea! Given that I should be writing, I'll probably have a miniature version of Kew Gardens at the front of my house and a whole wardrobe knitted by 5th December. Sometimes I wish that I was a little more predictable. Please wish me luck.

Hugs and good health to all. 

Strimmed

DH hired what is technically known as a bushwhacker. It's huge. It's taller than I am when it's upright and DH had to wear a harness to hold it properly, like the heavy machine guns in Aliens. I feel that it may have been a little excessive for my little garden. 

Before.

After

There's a load more to do, but at least we made a start and DH had fun with the strimmer. I'm planning on doing a tiny bit each day and seeing how it goes. 

I'm grateful for lavender oil because it works wonders on scratches and stings. The brambles and the nettles fought back vigorously and even though I wore gloves, I have a few war wounds to show for the struggle. DH wore gloves to load up the car to take the weeds to the tip and was glad of them. I spent most of the day involved in writing stuff. I'll catch up with that tomorrow. 

Hugs and good health to all. 

Rosemary For Remembrance

There is, or was, or will have been, a small rosemary plant that was managing somehow to keep going under the pile of nettles and various junk in the garden, but it's in the path of the strimmer tomorrow. So I finally got around to doing what I had been planning for a while. I cut it down, chopped it up and froze the leaves in olive oil.

I put a couple of springs aside for our meal tonight (nice sausage cooked with sprigs of rosemary in the oven pan, fancy frozen potato zigzag fries, peas cooked with a stock cube in the water and lots of gravy) and for the dinner planned for Sunday, which is honey mustard garlic sausages and I promise that we eat more than sausages but it's the way that the meals fell out this well, then dug in. I had this lot.

Which I got down to this

Which I chopped a bit, getting rosemary leaves everywhere and bunged into an ice cube tray.

It was all washed and I kept an eye out for any stray bits that shouldn't be there, then poured over around a quarter litre of olive oil. I definitely over filled it, and when I forgot to to take a pic before I put the lid on, I didn't dare take it off again in case the oil spilled everywhere.

I can always hack chunks off with a steak knife. And now the house smells like medicinal chest rub.

DH has picked up the strimmer. I'm sort of nervous, but I know that he'll do a good job and it's the push that I need to get the garden sorted out.

Hugs and good health to all. 

Small Steps

I've actually dragged myself out to our tiny front garden and I hacked back a stand of nettles. I've been watching too many of those self-sufficiency YouTube videos and I kept thinking 'there's good eating on these'. I pulled out a huge heap of them which I'm going to stuff into bags to take to the tip once they've wilted a little and reduced the chances of getting stung. I took a few hits as it is and I'm now very grateful for lavender oil and I smell like an old lady's handbag. But look at this - doesn't it look good enough to eat?

While I was battling the nettles, I cleared some space by Gladys, and I found some campers on her leaves.

The two tiny snails looked incredibly cute. 

I'm having to cut Gladys back as she's hanging over the garden and we can't get around easily. And I need to get the worst of the rubbish cleared in the next couple of days as DH has rented a strimmer for the weekend. And when DH gets a gadget, he goes for it with gusto. I expect the garden to be strimmed within an inch of its life. I'm seriously grateful and I want to make things easy for him. 

It's really noisy out with all the fireworks. I was originally considering popping into Aldi because if I go to the right one then they stock Thursday's deals late on Wednesday night and I can get a first pick of the good stuff. This week includes candles and I'm running short of candles, apart from the cute owls. However I don't always feel comfortable going out on Bonfire Night. Accidents can happen and while I'm pretty sure that I'll be safe, if I can stay in, I will.

Speaking of candles, I got a coupon from Tesco for 10% off candles in this week's batch. I did my usual trick of going through and clicking on all the ones that I fancy, knowing that I'll go back and weed out the ones that aren't actually that good at second glance. When the discount came in at over £13, I went back and pruned the list severely. It's not like 10% is a good discount. There will be better sales at other times, often with 20% off or more, or I could call in at HomeSense who have an extremely good discount candle shelf. It's the over-stocks and end of line candles and they're often from extremely high-end ranges. Not to mention it will encourage me to leave the house.

I feel quite good about today. There weren't any major triumphs, but I did a few very small, insignificant steps that were more than I have done recently and that to me is a win. 

Writing stuff - I posted a little bit on chat about why I wasn't writing a Novel in November here. For years, November has been a novel writing month and it's never worked for me, so I decided firmly that I was going to spend November tidying up some loose ends, editing pieces that I should have submitted years ago and generally getting my act together. I wrote the piece last weekend with a view to posting it today (as I said, I'm trying to get my act together), and then I dipped into Royal Road, where some of my unfinished stuff is languishing, and they're doing a Writathon. All (hah!) I need to do is write 55,555 by the 5th of December. Do you have any idea how hard it was for me not to sign up? I was jotting down notes about what I could write and how I could juggle it with other goals and what sort of milestones I'd need to hit - and I shouldn't do it at all! There is a non zero chance that I'll sign up before 15th November (when you are required to have written 25,000 words to stay in the Writathon), and if I do, I'll be ready to beat myself over my head with my own keyboard! I'll share how it's going. 

And I realised that my contribution to Connections E-magazine was overdue so I've been rattling along with that as well. 

Hugs and good health to all. 

Too Cute

Last Christmas, DH got me cute owl candles. I've just finished burning one. 

The container is so adorable that I don't want to throw it out. But I have no idea what it could be used for. The lid doesn't fit snuggly at all and so I can't use it as a container for something like pins. It's such a small size as well that I don't think I could use it for something like a pen pot. Here's the container with a shot glass for size.

To put that into context, the glass measures up to two tablespoons of liquid. The owl is diddy!

I was thinking about it being perfect for air plants or tiny succulents, then I remembered the swarms of aphids that descended on the chilli plants, so perhaps artificial tiny succulents. Or I could donate them and someone else could get the benefit. But they're so cute!

I'm readying myself for an early night. Tesco's Christmas delivery slots are released tomorrow to those paying for delivery savers, like me, and they open at 6am. To be honest, I'll be extremely surprised if I can't get a slot on 23rd December even if I log in later. The demand for them seems to have dropped over the last few years. Besides, I'll have most of the snacks, goodies, and frozen food already in. My Christmas pudding came today and that's just the start. And I have no shame that I'll be buying ready made practically everything. Mind you, I'm also going to be saving space in the freezer to pack away frozen bags of whatever the stupidly cheap veggies the supermarkets are giving out. If they're offering bags of carrots and parsnips for 20p again, my freezer is going to be rammed with soup!

Writing stuff - I'm considering the whole Nyla story and I don't think that it's working how I would like it. This means that instead of returning to that, I've republished an old favourite of mine here - I Never Knew Her Name. 

Hugs and good health to all. 

Knitting Continues

Bear continues to keep in touch. He's explained his coursework to me, which impressed me no end. I barely understood one word in twenty, but it was so lovely to hear his voice. Things are just happily tootling along. I'm settling down to hibernate. I've also placed a grocery delivery and I've ordered the first of the Christmas goodies. I'm using Tesco Clubcard vouchers to pay for Christmas. As usual, I'm swearing that I'll get less than last year, and to be fair, I've gradually cut down. However it's November tomorrow and now I'm watching for sales on things like goodies that I can stash away until the big day. Really, I just want the men at home and for it all to be cosy. I may invest in candles - lots and lots of candles!

The next bit is a lot of knitting. You may want to skip it if you're not a knitter as it's a lot of grumbling about knitting things.

The delay since the last post is because I wanted to take a pic and I was baffled about the best way to do it. I then took the pictures and now my phone won't share them! In the end I looked for a pic of knitting on Unsplash, and when I entered 'knitting' in the search engine, it pulled up this, which is crochet. I can't crochet.

Photo by Imani on Unsplash

Which sort of sums it all up. 

Eventually I managed to coax the phone to get the pics. This is the current state of the jacket I'm knitting. 

It's just a sort of heap, because I've finished the main body, and the back and both fronts are knitted in one piece from the bottom up. The jacket is this one which is a jacket in chunky, and as I'm a larger lady with a ridiculously ample bosom, I'm knitting the largest size. Which is big. The finished length is supposed to be 36 inches or 93cm, and the bottom hem, which is all in one, is 62 inches or 157cm if I knit to size, and I have the uneasy feeling that I've knit it large. I've just started on the first sleeve. 

The instructions I have are to block the pieces before making up. As it's all in stocking stitch or stockinette, the whole thing has curled up. Apparently, I need to block a stretch of knitting that's seriously curled and nearly two yards long - and that's just the hem! There isn't a single uncurled edge. I bought a pack of blocking pins but they look somewhat inadequate and the only place I can think of that has that sort of space and that is free is bear's bed, and I'm not sure that he'd approve. 

My mother used to lightly press her knitting under a damp cloth, and I may try that. I'll have to do something as it's curling up to a ridiculous degree. After the mess I made when I dropped all the shoulder stitches, I'm not going to be wearing it outside of the house, so I think the main quality I'm looking for is 'fits over jumper and t-shirt' and from what I can see, it will do that very nicely. 

I'm not knitting it again. I found myself knitting five stitches for the neckband on a circular needle that was 150cm or 60 inches long. I spent more time trying to get the needle and yarn in position than I did knitting the row. 

Writing Stuff - today is the last day of October and my writing blog can calm down. I posted a story a day from Kane's story, most of them old but a couple of new ones. Today I posted the final story here - Not Fit - which is new and is quite a read at just under seven thousand words. I hope that if you dip in then you enjoy it. 

The stats on my writing blog are now going odd. I have no idea what's going on and I'm putting it down to bots. However, for a while I've been getting a regular hit on Invitation Accepted so I thought I had better have a look and remind myself what it was all about. I'm ashamed to say that I'd forgotten how it ended. I enjoyed the read, but I feel like a very neglectful story mother. I've added the link to ease my conscience, but I feel that perhaps I ought to have a rummage and see what I've forgotten!

Hugs and good health to all.