Food and Leverage

Winter has set in and it has been quite cold (3*C) and today very wild, windy and rainy. We've had lots of warnings and I made sure I have the candle and matches ready in case the power goes off. I know it is cold because when I go out Peri waits for me at the back door on her rug, and spurns the garage. Lorelai Gilmore just spurns me altogether and sleeps inside on the comfy chair.

They do love the cold weather and run and leap and play with vigor. The creek is really full so they can achieve Total Saturation in no seconds flat.

Pups playing
Pups in the creek
I have spent the last week watching the first two series of Leverage. It is Very Good Indeed. I can highly recommend it, and I don't know why it hasn't been on 'real TV' here. I watched the second season lying in bed but I have saved the very last episode to eke out the excitement.

Leverage
I did do some WW Knitting in Public a week or so ago and I accidentally turned up a week early on Saturday for our Knitting in the Library. Oh dear!! I like to think I was just very prepared for this Saturday. I knitted a square for Save The Children, but it will definitely need blocking. The decrease half is not as tight as the increase half. Which is strange. It's less of a square and more of a rhombus.

Not really a square
It is MrsDrWho's birthday today, but she is home ministering to the kitten, Muppin, who is recuperating form her little operation. Muppin likes me again now, I think she was so happy to see a familiar face when I collected her from the Vet, though all the nurses were keen to adopt her as she is so cute!!!

I shall be having a Guest Post tomorrow for Tuesday's Letter's Eat: Judy-May. We are both very excited!!! As you can tell. I am looking forward to cooking her recipe!!

Last week my computer had only 4MB of memory left. I have now deleted everything except the things it needs to actually run, I can't even open PDFs, and I had to custom install my new printer. I was going along quite well again until two Microsoft Updates ate up lots of memory. I have a back-up hard-drive that I bought from school that I can plug in and use, it's just a question of doing it. Apparently I always put off till tomorrow what I could do today.

Right now I am going to take my tablets with a nice cup of peppermint tea, and we will go to bed and listen to the rain on the roof. Jimoein tells a joke about a can opener, the ones that always do a lap of honour around the tin before they actually start any kind of can opening. Lorelai Gilmore likes to do a lap of honour before she goes to bed. When they have been outside and we are turning off lights and computers and TVs, she runs to the back door, and looks expectantly at me. I open the door and she goes out, walks in a little circle under the porch, and then runs into bed. It seems she has made sure all is really right with the world!!! And so, to bed.........


Xena: Worrier Princess

I am a worrier. It's in my genes. My pop was a worrier, my mum is a worrier and I am too. I try not to worry, but even when I am feeling happy and content, there's an undercurrent of worry running deep below in my subconscious.

This week I am worried because I have a rash of tiny lumps on my arm at my elbow, I pricked my thumb with the stalk of a lemon and I am worried I might get tetanus, and then I patted Peri and felt a hard lump on her shoulder. That would be her shoulder bone. Apparently she has been covering her bones with a layer of fat and I have never felt them before. My thumb doesn't have a red line of infection racing up it, and I am still able to talk, so my jaw is fine. The rash is still there, so I still have a worry.

I think I like to fill my mind with small worries so I don't have to deal with the big worries.

Xena:Warrior Princess is being shown on TV and I am watching every day, from the start. Tonight The Sweeney begins. I used to love that show, so it will be interesting to see how it holds up.

I finished MrsDrWho's Hatty Potter. It is very slouchy and when I took a picture it brought to mind the hats The Goodies wore in the Eckythump episode. The colour is more correct in the top photo. It is exactly what she wanted and far too hot to wear until Winter.

Hatty Potter on her head
Hatty Potter Flat
My tea has not been hot. Now I have my lovely new big teapot, I can have two and sometimes three cups of tea from it, but by the second, the tea is cold. I knitted a Tea Mitten, rather than a cosy. I found the pattern on The Ravelry and knitted it today. It took more wool than the pattern said, and I don't know why, so I made i-cord loops instead of a little button placket and one is a different colour. The buttons have some real gold on them (or so it said on the packet) I think I will replace them, but they were the only buttons I had. I also think I cast off the top edge too loosely. Still, it works very well and kept the tea warm for almost a quarter of an hour.

Tea Pot Noodle
Peri and Gilly have been making long shadows when we walk. The position of the Sun must be slowly changing to Autumn setting.  They are so full of life and excitement that they play rough and rowdy rebel games inside, usually over a piece of plastic cup, and they have to be sent outside to run about. It is much better to run about inside though.

Peri's shadow
Gilly's shadow
At the moment it is snake time, until late in March, and so Peri and Lorelai Gilmore have to walk on the bush tracks on the lead. They are very good walkers on leads and don't pull or veer wildly. They always walk with Peri on the left and Gilly on the right. I don't know why, but the older/oldest dog always walks on the left, Harki did too.

Labradors on leads
I have been out to a vegetarian cafe. The food, though tasty, was pretty much plonked on the table with no explanation, so I can't really name anything definitively. The platter was quite large and there was a plate with triangles of flat bread, but the service was non-existent. Maybe we were all on the wrong side of whatever the cool and trendy vegetarian cafe age is??? Disappointing really, because I have been before and the service was fine.

Platter
I bought some new cordless phones today. It barely cost more than the replacement batteries needed for the old ones, and I now have three handsets and an answering machine. It seems wrong, but that's the way the world works now. And who am I to question it?

I have actually read a book at long last, a Gallagher Girls book. I accidentally read them in the wrong order: 1, 3 then 2, but Book 4 is on its way from The Library any day now!!!  I ordered six books from overseas. One of the books is a new novel that costs $35 here and I paid $32-09 for all six. And I don't care, really, I couldn't afford to pay $210 for six new books.

I have signed up for Me-Made-March, which is just like Self Stitched September, except with different initials. I must get sewing again now the weather is cooler.

The weather is forecast to be cool for a few days. We are a little oasis of calm here, and have no real bushfire or flood or any other natural disaster threats. So when my mum and I talked on the phone tonight, we worried that because we had none we must be due for some kind of weather event. We are a worry!!!