Monthly Musing - January 2018 - All aboard!

“Sorry, you’ve just missed that train, but don’t worry – there’ll be another one in an hour.”

These are never the words you want to hear after a long and busy day, so when the station manager said, “but you could get the next train and change”, I felt my spirits rise.  For a fleeting moment, I remembered the words from our favourite Christmas film The Polar Express: “The thing about trains … it doesn’t matter where they’re going.  What matters is deciding to get on” but that sentiment could have sent me anywhere and not necessarily in the right direction, so I headed back to the information board.  There was indeed another train due in just ten minutes that would mean an extra change but given the choice between sitting on a cold platform for an hour or sitting on a warm train that going in the general direction that I wanted to go in, I decided to get on the next train.

Midweek

Hello!  And how are you on this ... [looks out of the window] ... drab and dreary Wednesday morning?  The wind is rattling the windows and the rain is bouncing off the patio flags so I've persuaded the dog that it's best to stay indoors for now.  He's snoring on his bed by the Aga so I think he agrees with me!

This was taken earlier this week on one of our walks - this is usually nothing more than a small overflow stream but all the rain (I was so upset, it started out as beautiful, big, fat snowflakes and within an hour was torrential rain) has caused flooding in lots of areas.  I could do with speaking to whoever controls the weather because they're not getting it right!  Still, at least the ducks seemed happy.

No-nylon sock yarn review: Doulton Flock Border Leicester 4ply

It's been just over six months since I finished my Easy Lace Socks using Doulton Flock Border Leicester 4ply yarn and it's definitely time for me to give you an update on how the yarn has worn.

As soon as I saw that fabulous purple colour (it's called Cringle Moor), I knew that I wanted to do more with it than just knit a plain sock, and it worked beautifully with the very easy lace pattern that I wanted to use for these beginner socks.   

Getting back to it

Phew, this week has zoomed past - here we are at Sunday already!  It's been a back to work, back to school, back to university sort of week and it takes some effort to shift back into normal gear after a couple of weeks of lazy lie-ins and too much chocolate.

It's been nice to get back to the usual routine of an early morning walk - I truly appreciate the time to get my head together for the day.  The weather has been a mixture of frost ...

Happy New Year

It's January 2018!  

This year feels like it's going to be a fantastic year, don't you think?  I love these first few days of the year, they're like an open book of blank pages and we can write the story of the year however we like.  Yes, of course there are going to be unexpected pitfalls and disasters along the way (our Aga has turned itself off without notice, that was pretty unexpected but at least it waited until after our guests had left on New Year's Day!), but there are also going to be triumphs and successes that are just waiting for us to celebrate - and we need both good and bad to be able to appreciate the other.  Bring it on!

I am pretty good at remembering to say "thank you" on a regular basis - gratitude was one of the things that I was determined to cultivate in a big way last year - and before I blether on any more, I must say thank you to you for all your comments and support on my blog last year.  I lost the plot with replying to them all before Christmas (I lost the plot with a lot of things just before Christmas but the world is still turning :) ) but do be sure that I do read them all and am very grateful that you have taken the time to write to me.

So what's new for this year?