I can’t believe it’s as long as three weeks ago – more, even – since I blogged. I have been meaning to for ages and ages, and now I actually am.

Have done a number of shawls now, one pimpelliese, two wingspans, and more presents for different people. Am just doing a little bag thing, which I’ve knitted with beads. That was one of my “things”, I wanted to learn to knit with beads. I knitted a little cake for my diabetic friend (the only person I could think of who would want a cake you can’t actually eat!) and knitted a few beads in with that. It does look pretty, although it’s a little bit of a fiddle. Well worth it though, certainly on small projects.

Today is the first day I can remember for at least three months that it hasn’t rained. The weather forecasters are telling us that we are in for a spell of sunshine now for a while at least. Thank heavens – the rain is good for the gardens, and the water shortage we had (unbelievably, in Britain), but day after day after day with no sunshine is just depressing. The garden is looking lovely, but I keep finding giant weeds pretending really hard to be flowers. Nope, up you come, in the green wheelie bin.

Spent the weekend in Southampton for ED’s birthday barbecue – the first dry spell for months and she managed to nobble it for her barbie. She did have to change it from the Saturday to the Sunday though, because Saturday it just tipped it down.

Am still very smug about my knitting stash. It’s just so easy to find yarn, and to decide what I’m going to use to knit a given project, because I don’t always have to plod up the stairs and physically start pulling out bags and bags of yarn. I can initially look on Ravelry to see what I have, see if there’s enough, the right colour, and then when I’ve decided just plod up the stairs at that point and it’s easy to find and extract. Smug smug smug.

Am just drinking a nice cup of Lady Grey tea while hubby reads in the lounge. Cat is upstairs on our bedroom windowsill – an excellent vantage point – so that she can see the world go round. She went into boarding kennels while we were in Southampton, and is clearly extremely glad to be home, bless her. Lots of rolling about on her back, luxuriating and purring. Lovelyl

Spent the last three days failing to fix my friend’s computer. Vista needed the recovery disk to boot it every time, and eventually fell over into a Blue Screen Of Death. Luckily by that point I’d managed to get all her documents off and onto an external hard drive, so I could start converting them from Works format into a more compatible format (one by one though, no batch converters to be found. Not free ones, anyway). After three attempts at installing Linux Ubuntu, all needing boot repairs, none of them working, despite being different versions, I gave up. But it’s always worth trying to fix a computer before giving up. They’re getting a new one, and a laptop, so they’ve always got access to one or the other. If they want me to, I’ll install Dropbox on both, so that they also always have access to their documents . . . . .
backing up seems to be a major no-no for most people. I’m paranoid about it, and back up all over the place, regularly. I can’t imagine how distraught hubby would be if we lost all our technology. I’d be a bit pissed off too, and feeling guilty, but it’s just so important.

“Stitch” group is great. A chance to sit and just concentrate on knitting, chat to friends, drink coffee and eat hazelnut and chocolate dairy-free loaf. Excellent. I have a new system now – I was thinking to myself “right, in Solihull for Stitch tonight, so I’ll do x, y and z before/after I go” and ending up exhausted. Now I just go to “Stitch” and do anything else separately. In more than one trip if necessary. All part of the management of the M.E./C.F.S.

Will ask the GP next week what’s going on with my thyroid results (am shaky and sweaty) and my red blood cells (too big with no apparent cause). Busy week. Tuesday – meeting YD in Birmingham pm. Wednesday – GP. Thursday – osteopath (had a back episode a couple of weeks ago) and Friday Warwick Hospital re hand/wrist. Blimey. I’ll be a wreck by Friday night. But can sleep at the weekend. And it’s only “one thing a day” which is my sort of rule/mantra.

Bought some strawberries at a reduced price last week and made three jars of jam. Absolutely delicious. I thought I’d ordered enough this week for more jam making, but no, just one punnet. That’s ok though, we can just eat them. Nom nom nom.

Have just had a little potter round our garden. It’s not big, so it doesn’t take long. Found a few weeds, pulled them up, admired the very blue anchusa and the bright red crocosmia. A lovely splash of colour.