Around Here

It has got proper cold here, autumn is sliding towards winter.  We are due snow this week often that is the forecast but not the reality.  We are prepared, the winter tyres are on the cars, if we get loads we will just stay at home.

We have had our annual birthday month, my husband and I at the beginning of last month and my son last week. When Alice was little she found it so hard to wait six more months for hers to come round.  My son is now 20, that time has past so quickly, but slowly too which is a weird dichotomy.  I will not be writing about him much now not that I have in the past few years as I haven't blogged that much.  He is at home with us, working full time earning some funds to go travelling next year.  It is a new stage of family life for all of us.

After a very full and (too) busy October I have managed to keep the diary much quieter for this month.  A better balance of fairly busy weekends and whole weekends with no commitments at all.  The absolute perfect indulgence which I am embracing to the full.  I have turned down offers, meet ups and meetings, and am embracing the season.

My quieter weekends means that I have been doing many things at home that I never seem to be able to find the time for.  At the beginning of the year I wrote a list of the things that I would like to sew during the course of the year,  I have added to it a few times over the months but it was not a very long list.  I love sewing but I am slow and don't have room in my house for a dedicated sewing space.  Getting everything out and putting it away each time I sew means it doesn't happen very often.  I have, however,  completed two of the those projects this month alone.  I will share photos of them when the light is good enough to take some photos, it is a little grey and gloomy here at the moment.

I have also had a bit of tidy up of my yarn stash.  It is entirely made up of balls that are leftover from knitting projects most of which are parts of balls, there is a small bag of unused balls where I have bought that extra ball as a just in case and not actually needed it.  I am not one for buying yarn that I like and might use one day, although I am often tempted.  It is all stored in a big fabric basket that I made, you can see it in this post here.  It is hardly surprising that after four years of adding to the yarn in this basket and not taking much out it had become an overflowing mess.  It is still in Alice's bedroom although in a different piece of furniture now.  I was clearing out the knitting bags I have in the living room and found several balls that needed putting away in that overflowing basket.  I have been meaning to tidy it up and maybe get rid of some of the yarn in there and spent a least an hour doing just that.  Part way through I realised it was probably about time to find a project or projects to use up some of it so I had a look on Ravelry.  For those of you not familiar with this site it is a knitting (and crocheting) rabbit hole website with thousands of amazing patterns, many of them free.  I didn't stay on there long, but long enough to find at least one pattern that will use up a significant proportion of my stash.  I have moved all the yarn for that project into a basket which is now in the living room waiting for me to get started on it.  I put some in a bag for the charity shop and the rest has gone back in the fabric basket.  It is far better organised now.

Whilst my stash project waits to be cast on, I am knitting presents for that event next month, it feels a bit early to be writing that word here, although I am also on with making cards for it too.  I have a (second) sock, a hat, a wash cloth and mitts on the needles right now.   Lots of small projects, one of which always leaves the house with me wherever I am going, even if I only have time for a few rows it means they are all growing.  I have two more pairs of socks and another wash cloth to make, I think that is entirely manageable.  I have already finished a small jacket for a special bunny, the soft toy sort of bunny, that belongs to my nephew.

With life slowing down a little I have had time to revive my rather neglected sourdough starter and have been making bread more regularly again.  The loaves were a little weird to start with I think the starter was a bit lifeless, the loaves were so heavy and indigestible.  A little TLC has bought it back to life and the loaves are once again back to their normal, tasty selves.  We are not big bread eaters in our house, we only eat one of two loaves a week but much prefer home made bread.

I made a batch of sauerkraut last month, I bought one of these at the end of the summer and really wanted to try it out.  I have been making sauerkraut on and off for years.  I have a Sandor Ellis Katz book which I have used endlessly, I have yet to make a duff recipe from this treasure trove.  Apart from that is sauerkraut, it more often than not goes mouldy before it has fermented properly.  It didn't matter what I did, or how much I sterilised or didn't, the mould would arrive.  I even cleaned out my pantry as I wondered if it was something in the air in there, still didn't work.  I don't thing my weights were doing the job at keeping air from coming into contact with the vegetables.  The Kefirko fermenter seems to be doing just the job, after a whole month there is no sign of any mould.  I am looking forward to cracking it open this week to see if it tastes as good as it looks.  If it continues to work after a few more batches I might just have to purchase another one.

Despite a busy October I managed to read two books, Landlines by Raynor Winn her third book about an astonishing walk that she and her husband completed from the far North of Scotland to their home in Cornwall.  It wasn't their plan when they set out, they started on the Cape Wrath trail which is 200 miles of wilderness in one of the remotest parts of Scotland when they finished that they continued on the one trail after another until they made it home.  Those of you who are familiar with Raynor Winn will know that her husband was diagnosed with a neurodegenerative disease which improves when they walk.  She is a wonderful writer.  The second was Underland* by Robert McFarlane another writer I love.  This books is about Robert's journey into a variety of subterranean landscapes, he has a wonderful way of weaving words.  This months reading is Doughnut Economics by Kate Raworth, a highly accessible description of an intriguing and most definitely possible way of redefining economics to meet the needs of humans (all humans not just the richest) whilst also not extracting to the point of depletion.  If you haven't already guessed I read non-fiction, pretty much exclusively.  I have read one fiction book this year so far.

I reached a rather amazing milestone earlier this month, a 1000 day streak on Duolingo.  That's over two and half years.  In reality it has been more like 1030 or 40 days as there have been many days when I have had to use a streak freeze to keep it going.  Most of those days when I have been out and about with zero mobile phone reception or access to wifi.  It has mostly been French with a little Ukrainian and more lately Romanian.  It is one of the first things I do when I wake up, a good habit to get my brain going of a morning.

So that is me at the moment slowing down and enjoying and embracing the cold and dark as we move through Autumn into Winter.

* When I typed Underland into this post, it autocorrected to Sunderland.  The Sunderland I know is a city in the NE of England and, absolutely no offence to the place, a totally different place to that of those described in Underland.  It probably has its own subterranean cultures which are every bit as wonderful in their own way.  It made me smile, got to love an autocorrect.