Grey and misty

I hate the fag end of winter.

Everything looks grim and grey. True, the days are getting a little longer, but the quality of light is still very poor.

Most of our walks, lately, have been around Saltholme. We had to stop for these guys last time. They were quite disgruntled that we wanted to be on the same path as them.

A visitor

I was walking past the landing window when larger than usual movement outside caught my eye.

If we're lucky we catch a bird of prey in action. Often we have a couple of woodpeckers, but the only evidence of this visitor is usually footprints in the snow or a ripped bin bag, if we're stupid enough to leave one outside.

Picture isn't great, as it's through glass.

He pottered about at the bottom of the garden for ages.

Big Rubble

Knitting update.
I've been trying to get things finished and reduce the number of projects I have in progress.

This is a terrible picture of a great sweater. It's Big Rubble (Ravelry link) and is very warm and comfortable. Unfortunately, the sleeves make it difficult to wear under a coat. Can't have it all, I guess!

Whem it's dark and the snow is blowing..

On mornings like this, I like to do a spot of holiday planning.

This year we're doing a road trip. It's similar to the one we did a couple of years ago, but we're missing out Yosemite and Death Valley.
So:
San Fransico
Carmel
Las Vegas
Palm Springs
Los Angeles

I enjoy the forward planning and reflecting afterwards as a significant part of my holiday. I love guide books and websites and other people's photos.
Trips like this take a lot of planning!

Walking the walk

We're taking steps, literally, to increase our fitness. (As per post of 1st Jan) As we like gadgets and need some motivational kick-starting, we have Omron pedometers.
It's very childish of me, but I keep sniggering about alarms going off to tell me Jimmy Saville is around. Glossing over that, mine is purple, J's is green.

I'm working up to 10,000 steps a day. I'm not quite there yet. J is. We took a reasonable walk around Saltholme this afternoon, but afterwards, I was waylaid by ironing, sorting out a cupboard and cleaning out the fridge to track down what that strange, cheesy smell was. Plenty of moving and bending, but not as many steps as J managed while planting up his bargain flowering bulbs in the garden.

I like the new wooden installation at Saltholme. Mad Hatter's Tea Party.

There are lots of hares around, too. 

In knitting news, I finished a test cowl, 3 days late, but I didn't think I was going to manage at all. It's a test for Brenda  of Artemis Adornments.  I'm going to send it to my brother, P, but persuaded a p-ed off j to model it for a photograph.

The hawk's deliberate stoop in air

Unseasonally warm at 12 degrees C today.

We walked at Saltholme and watched a Marsh Harrier hunting. She was too fast to capture on the wing with my camera, but posed at rest in the tallest tree.

Last week we saw Waxwings there, but they seem to have moved on, having stripped every tree of its berries.

2013

Happy New Year!

I didn't make any resolutions last year and don't intend to this year, either. I do have a few plans and some goals, however. Goals aren't the same as resolutions. Don't ask me how or why.

Goals:

1. To increase my general fitness. This has dropped off significantly as my activity was curtailed by my abdominal surgery in the summer. I need to pick it up a bit again now that I've had the all-clear from my surgeon. I shall start by walking more, then I'd like to add some swimming and some running.

2. To reduce household expenditure on food. We spend far too much and still throw too much away. I need to plan ahead more effectively and engage J and j in the process a bit more. Sometimes it's overwhelming to carry such a large proportion of the responsibility for shopping and meal planning and cooking alone.

3. To save a reasonable amount of spening money for our holiday. We're off to California and Nevada again in July.

4. To knit from my stash and get it down a bit.

2012 knitting

Surely there must have been more!

A year in some pictures

Nearly the end of another year.

I don't really know why I stopped blogging - I enjoyed it. It almost feels like a friendship breakdown. The longer you leave it, the harder it is to pick up the phone.

2012 brought a year of consolidation, really. No huge excitements, but steady contentment, I suppose.

We reworked some areas in the garden, but got hardly any use from them as the summer weather was so bad.

We enjoyed the Olympic coverage, but less so the Jubilee.

One of our neighbours decided to tackle the squirrel situation with a gun, to our horror. However, they came back, which makes me very happy.

I eroded my fear of heights a little.

Our woodpeckers had a baby, who continues to visit most days, but is very difficult to photograph.

J and I explored more possible escape locations across Yorkshire.

I decided it was time to go grey disgracefully!

Awww...

Knitting update

I have been knitting.

I finished a sweater:

And the pair of socks that have been haunting me for ever:

And then I cast on two projects in colours I don't normally choose.

Vodka Lemonade:

and more socks:

Very patriotic!

Reclamation and refurbishment 5 - finally!

Well, we finished the garden rennovations ages ago. Unfortunately, we have had the coldest May in years since then. It has also rained. Lots! I think it was the drought warnings and hosepipe bans that did it.

The deck is nice seating area again, now:



We did manage to use it in the cooler weather, too:


But it is much better now.

We finally had an excuse to get the parasol up, too:



We're very pleased with this new seating area. It extends the time we can spend outside, considerably.

Reclamation and refurbishment 4

A little while ago we bought some garden furniture from a local seller on eBay. It was by Firmans and made of teak, but had seen better days, but it was very cheap, so we thought it might be worth a bid.

We stored it on our new patio/sitting area and decided we liked it so much we would put some effort into restoring it. J stripped off the layer of treacly brown stain that the previous owners had splashed on in places, cleaned it down with wire wool and gave it a couple of coats of teak oil. Looks like a completely different set of furniture now. Even nicer than we could have hoped for.

Finding shower-proof seat cushions for the chairs was trickier than I imagined. I expected that every UK garden centre would be full of the things, given the kind of summer weather we usually get, but no. I contemplated making some out of oilcloth, but I'm not sure that the combination of heat, bottoms and plastic is what I'm really going for here. So, eventually found some in Next. Didn't get the matching parasol as I wanted something a bit bigger.

Reclamation and Refurbishment 3

More during:

It goes on.

We finished the reroofing yesterday evening and then, seeing it was dry and the forcast for the next couple of days is rain (just to coincide with the start of the hosepipe ban season), decided to give the decking a coat of protector. It was getting on and the light was fading by then, but halfway through we actually read the instructions and realised thatthe second coat had to be applied NOT MORE than 2 hours after the first (not at least 2 hours as we had interpreted it)!

Job eventually completed by the light of the fairy lights and ships lanterns out there by 9:45pm.

Glad we did it now, as it's raining again and the 12 year old timber is looking pretty good. We have to leave it for 24 hours before we can start putting things back on the timber, which is a good excuse for not doing DIY today. The house needs cleaning and my knitting is calling to me.

Happy Easter!

Reclamation and refurbishment 2

J and I have been doing a spot of DIY. We try to avoid it when we can, as we don't work well as a team under pressure and tend to bicker a bit. It always works out ok in the end but the process can be difficult. J has OCD leanings and I can be a bit slapdash.

The roof of our deck area needed to be replaced as the plexiglass had seen much better days. This meant that everything had to come off in order to get at the roof. J over-winters his tender plants there and his horrible cactus collection lives on there permanently. Oops, that was a bit of a giveaway, wasn't it?!

Before:

During:

 We're using this as the opportunity to have a good clean, retreat the wood and have a general tidy up. P, who used to work for J, came to help.

 

The tender plants have a new, temporary shelter on my new seating area! Better looked after than me!


J's collection of 'weird shit', as j calls it, has been revealed in its true g(l)ory. Some of the pieces are lovely, some are horrible, some just weird. All have been a bit hidden. Now we can begin the 'what goes back' discussions...

Can you guess what J used to do for a living?