Tuesday

Good morning, gentle readers.  It's a quiet, still morning outside right now, quite a contrast to the breeziness of the last few days.  I wonder if the sun will shine.

Yesterday was great, albeit a bit frustrating.

I got my bread made early - now that it is so mild, the rising and the proving takes much less time, which is helpful.

When Beth came round she helped me to make an important phone call.  I find using the phone really tricky because of my hearing loss so it was great to have her help.  It turned out to be a most frustrating experience.  Without going into details, I was pretty cross by the end, especially and the whole thing took over an hour which is really going to push up my phone bill and most of it was totally unnecessary.

After a reviving coffee, Beth and I had a Kitty Stitches action meeting and more or less sorted out what we are going to make for our Christmas goodies!

Then we set off for And Sew On.  The roads were good, no hold ups, and when we arrived e decided to have some lunch first (so crash went my food plans).  I had a warm bacon baguette with a little salad and it was really tasty so no regrets.  Then we decided to take a peek in all the other shops first, went to the garden shop and - closed, darn it.  So was the next and, disaster of disasters, so was And Sew On.  In fact, the only open place was the cafe.

That'll teach us to check opening times, won't it.

So we drove home again and sat down in front of the over-locker with the manual open and worked our way through the first part of it.  My goodness, it seemed very complicated, especially the threading up, but we got there - at least, we got there with the basic stitch anyway.  It really helped that each of the four spindles was threaded up in different colours so we could see exactly what each component did.  I can see that it will be a most useful addition to our tools.  We now have two machines and an over-locker.  One machine was given to us (thank you, I) and the other two things are a result of 'lump sum' affluence!  Well - I didn't have a posh holiday or a cruise or a mortgage to pay off so I reckon it was a good use of a bit of it.  It keeps on giving.

We spent the rest of the afternoon recovering from the mental effort by cutting out cloth for little bags and  scrunchies, using our leftover scraps of Christmas fabric.  In the evening I sewed up six scrunchies that required the blue cotton that was on the machine and experimented with a simple little pinafore which looks fine but is just a bit on the short side but never mind.

I have to say, it is really nice to have the telly back to normal again.  Back to Pointless and Eggheads.  University  Challenge and Only Connect are on again, three cheers, and then there was a poetically scientific prog from Brian Cox.  Can't complain about that!

Today's food:
B:  bran flakes, blueberries and raspberries, an apple
L:  egg salad wrap, orange
D:  tortilla pizza with a side salad, natural yogurt and strawberries