Friday

 Good morning, everyone.  Another cold night, another cold start to another day expected to stay below freezing but there's light at the end of the tunnel with temperatures expected to rise on Sunday, thankfully.

Poor old snowman is nearly a gonna, not because he is melting away but because he's leaning precariously over the abyss.  Awwwwww.

Some very regular and long standing readers may remember that during the last Beast from the East, I had a problem with the central heating.  The consensate pipe froze up so the boiler wouldn't ignite and it was flippin' cold for a few days.
Well, guess what happened yesterday.  Yup!  Thankfully, it was just a few hours and this time I didn't panic, nor did I rush out with kettles of boiling water and my hairdryer as I suspect I just ended up colder than I would have been and it didn;t work anyway!  I got out the fan heater and the halogen heater and put them on to keep my corner warm and waited.  What was different this time is that the sun was out, the hard frost on the car was melting and I reckoned it would soon warm up enough for the ice to shift.
And so it did.  It's fine this morning too (fingers crossed).

I've told Matt the Plumber and asked him to think of a more long lasting solution - obviously what he put into place last time isn't quite effective enough.  I have a boiler service at the beginning of March so we can discuss it then.

After that bit of unwelcomed excitement, the rest of the day went like a dream.  The chat with Chris was great fun, I had a short time with Beth and Alex and the SW Zoom meeting was lots of laughs.  A good day.

Today there are a couple of things.  I have to pop across town to pick something up and will tank up with petrol on the way.  I have a chat with Jackie scheduled for late morning too.  As it's Friday, I need to sort out various little pockets of clutter (it's amazing how clutter just magically appears overnight, isn't it?) and it's bedding changing day so more drying and ironing.

In comments, some of you asked about my colour scheme for the planned blanket.  Well, the scheme is the infamous 'whatever I can find in my stash' approach.  So far I have found one ball of natural aran, a huge ball of green that is the same yarn as I knitted some cushion covers with so that's a linking colour, some dusty dark mauvy-purple, some dusty pink and some red which might be too bright.
Some of this is rewound balls that look aran thickness but I am knitting one of the squares up to double as a swatch, just to check that, aran or chunky, they knit to the same dimensions.  I need six colours, 200g (more than 100g anyway) of five and 300g of whatever I use for the border - which will probably be the green to tone with the cushion covers.  So it's a bit in the air and I suspect I will need to buy some more natural which will or will not match with the existing ball (but that doesn't matter all that much really) and one other colour.
Some of the yarn is what I 'inherited' from Mum and I remember the jumpers/jackets that she made with it.  I think that's rather nice.

Right, well, I'd better go and continue my day.  Next stop, my corner, then a bath and to get dressed ready for the day!  I hope you are all staying nice and warm and that your day is a great one.  xx