Busy, Busy!

Another busy week has flown by, and unless you are seriously into paintings of potatoes, I don't have much to show for it! I have, however, sewn another little felt dog as after this week I had none in stock at all. This little chap is sort of a Jack Russell I suppose - he has the colouring, but is a bit round and cuddly. I've used the new lifelike eyes and a plastic nose this time which are absolutely minute and very fiddly to put in place - are they better than beads and embroidery?
He has a very smart navy blue bed, lined with my favourite Japanese fabric, baby blue printed with tiny dogs playing. As soon as his accessories are made up, he will be going on to the Etsy shop. I will be making more of these, kittens too, as in production terms, it's not long until Christmas - how depressing is that?


I have painted 8 more varieties of potato in the past 10 days - the new brushes are actually very good. Just as well, as Royal Talens never did get back to me about where I can buy the other type. Thought you might like to see this one, not yet finished I must hastily point out or you will think I have gone potato-crazy and am just painting blobs with Jack-o-lantern faces on them! But this variety is actually that colour and really does have cream semi-circles round the 'eyes' - one of the most interesting so far, and called 'Smile' for obvious reasons.


This has been a good year, despite the rubbish weather here in the UK, for getting exotic plants to flower. I bought this hibiscus a couple of months ago with flowers already on it and did wonder if once they had died it would ever flower again. Generally, if something has been cultivated in a garden centre's greenhouse, it is very hard to replicate the conditions at home and the plant is usually a bit of a waste of time. However, this week I was rewarded for the nurturing by this spectacular bloom with the promise of several more to come. Now if only I could raise hummingbirds............

A small update on the fires in Athens, which are out at last. Finally got to speak to my sister, and apparently the flames got so close they were licking the garden fence but thanks to a lot of hard work and bravery by my nephew and friends, the fire got no closer. The whole area is devastated, with only two houses in their block saved. A tiny miracle, their cat turned up three days after the fire having been missing presumed dead, dirty, thin and frightened but unscathed.

A Day of Ups & Downs.......

It's not even lunchtime & my emotions have been up and down like a roller-coaster already! Let's start with the fairly mundane......I finally finished the mauve lace fichu I have been knitting for a week. It was a fairly complicated pattern and involved copious notings on a piece of paper to keep up with the number of rows, increases, joins, and so many stitchmarkers it looked like a belly-dancer's necklace. I ran out of yarn about two thirds through as this was some given to me a while back (thanks again Jo!) and had to wait for a delivery of an extra ball. All the time I had a nagging worry about the end result....looks pretty with the light behind it, doesn't it?


Here it is in detail - you can see all my hard work..........but what about without the light behind it?


Ah, now here is what I suspected might happen but tried not to think about. Even after blocking ( with some very severe tugging) the yarn is so fluffy that the lace pattern kind of blends in to one.


You'd have to wear it with a bright white shirt to get any idea of the lace........ I'm so cross with myself! On the plus side, I learnt a couple of new techniques and proved that I can knit a pattern designated 'experienced'.

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My car is quite old....there are people out there who have probably paid more for shoes than I paid for my little Peugeot. My partner rebuilds & restores vintage racing cars for a living, and gave my little car a real 'going over' when we got it several years ago, but hasn't done much to it since. So when the time for it's MOT comes rumbling around, I start worrying big time. Last week it failed the MOT but only by a couple of very minor repairs.....and today it has it's shiny, crisp 'pass' certificate and a stay of execution for another year. Phew!

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Perhaps you have seen on the news about the fires in Greece this last weekend. Having lived out there for many years and seen a mountain burn to a crisp in 20 minutes flat while I prepared to take 4 children, 2 dogs, a cat and a parrot over the other side of a hill should the wind change, and my sister & her husband manned the hose-pipes, I can appreciate the severity of these annual forest fires. Every August when the trees and undergrowth are at their driest and most combustible and the Meltemi wind blows strongly from the Sahara, something sparks a fire - it could be a careless cigarette from a car window, the sun through a piece of glass, or even as in 2007, some crazy old woman & a box of matches with a grudge against her neighbour for not letting her graze her goats on his land.

This year, the fires were in an area very familiar to me - my sister & her family live on the outskirts of Athens, as do friends of mine, and news reports quoted the districts of Dionissos & Aghia Paraskevi which are right on their doorsteps. I telephoned this morning to find out what's been happening to discover that it's all burnt......but thank God and my brother-in-law's foresight in fitting a huge watertank under the house as well as my nephew's extreme bravery, my sister's house has escaped more or less unscathed. The houses around them are charcoal, but theirs is still standing. I am trying not to think about what could have happened, just so glad it didn't.

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Finally, it's a bit trivial but it got me so mad I could have hit the woman concerned, I went into the Halifax to do my partner a favour and pay some Euros into his account. They are a big bank, you'd have thought this would have been quite straightforward. But no, I live in the UK where anything foreign is treated with suspicion and loathing.....I was swooped upon by the lady from the Enquiries desk and asked if she could help. At the sight of some crisp Euros, she asked if they had been bought at this bank.....er, no, my partner works abroad & this is some of his wages. Well apparently, unless they had been bought through the bank, I was not allowed to even exchange them at this bank, let alone pay them in to an account. With remarkable restraint (what are the penalties for rapping a bank employee over the head with your knuckles by the way?) I walked out saying 'That is just silly' between clenched teeth, walked 20 feet to the travel agents, exchanged the Euros for pounds from a very nice man who listened to my story and said 'that is ridiculous, they are a BANK', walked back 20 feet to the Halifax and paid in the nice English pounds. ARRRRGH!!!! If any of you are bank workers and can explain the reasoning behind this, please do so because it beats the £*%! out of me!

Painting potatoes later on will be a nice relaxing therapy!