Time travel

For James Bond and us lesser mortals involves nothing more complicated than driving up the A9. The A9, the most dangerous road in Scotland, goes sort of past us on its way between Perth and Inverness and according to James Bond and M allows you to go back in time. There may be something in that because last week Spring was definitely here. I stood in the Count's bedroom watching the crows bring twigs back to the oak trees for their nests; and delighted in the little clumps of snowdrops scattered about the garden.
But in the last few days it has become decidedly colder, the sky is back to being a steely grey and there is snow forecast for the weekend.
Who knows, maybe next week it will be autumnal again?

Jam huh?

The paint stripping did not work. Apparently the stuff we have - Polycell's Less Mess - is rubbish and we would be better off using jam. Alas I read this after I had applied the second coat.

We are in the midst of potty training at present. Actually no, the less said about that the better only to note that whilst I admire Ig's incredible willpower I do wish she would just po.......

Awe

I am in awe of parents who get on with things despite having young children about the place. How do they do it? Mine seem intent on sabotaging any act of DIY by either creating such a fuss that the piece of work takes three times as long as it should, or simply by trashing another room so the work is never done.
I'm writing this as someone who spent the weekend practically tearing her hair out in frustration at the impossibility of raking up leaves in the garden without tantrums being thrown and a seemingly never ending stream of demands being issued. Still the leaves did get raked, and the veggie patch partially weeded so it was not the utterly fail that it felt.
Today though this got done



This is our bathroom window in the process of being stripped. It was painted closed some time in the past so it's difficult to get air into the bathroom with the result that mould is beginning to darken the room. Hopefully in stripping it the window will be unsealed.

Short but sweet

I am rather weary today. I was up at 1am with Ig; then four hours later The Count was awake following a bad dream and wouldn't go back to sleep until I curled up in bed beside him and told him a tale about cross birds and very naughty piggies (he is utterly obsessed with Angry Birds). I am, I confess, a little nervous that he will have a "bad dream" tonight just so he can hear the next part.

Mum? What's 100 + 100?

The Count is starting to learn addition and subtraction now so we are being bombarded with questions like the one above. He never seems to remember the answers though or he's got his questions on a loop as we get asked the same ones over and over. So this morning I started teaching him how to lay out an addition question and he got it straight away. I thought that might stop the maths quiz but alas no!

Laundry done. A few days ago Ig "decorated" the livingroom with the contents of the ash bucket....
All the couches had to be stripped of their covers which have slowly been making their way into the washing machine. And half a hour ago the last one got hung up to dry hurrah

Books

It's becoming harder and harder for me to read paper books. MrV bought me a Kindle for my birthday and I love it. It's so much easier to read a book on that and, alas, far too easy for me to buy books for it too.
But I'm reading a paper book at present, one that MrV bought me for Christmas. It's Elanor Dymott's debut novel Every Contact Leaves A Trace. A dark and quite bewitching tale about the husband of a murdered woman and his discovery that perhaps he didn't know his wife as well as he had thought. I'm only half way through so I can't accidentally drop any spoilers and tell you who dunnit but I can, and do recommend it as a very good read

I love Tuesdays

I truly do, especially this Tuesday. Ig went to playgroup as she does every Tuesday (that we don't have stomach bugs, or the flu, or any other of the many viruses going around at present) and I get two whole hours of peace and quiet.
Today I worked on a pair of fingerless gloves - my hands get quite cold when I'm knitting, but the pattern was flawed and the glove I had knitted was too small. Then I found these on the web. Aren't they beautiful? So now I'm learning to crochet...
And all the time I'm listening to The Navy Lark and giggling.




Ig after playgroup, with sticks

It's a beautiful day in the neighbourhood

It was one of those beautiful Scottish late winter days, all blue skies and brilliant sunshine. Looks warm outside but trust me it's not.




This is the top of one of the fence posts covered in frost. I love the way it follows the circles of the grain.

Previously on FLFP

Our heroine, Velcro, had moved out of Edinburgh to a small country town somewhere in Scotland. With her went her beloved MrV, and the three etceteras FB, the Count, and Ig, but not, as this cannot be emphasised enough, her nemesis the mice who had plagued her very existence for months.
We moved into a quirky house that needed a lot of work done to it and to be honest, still does. Half of the walls on the main floor have had the woodchip stripped from them but the rest still need to be done. The ceilings are festooned with purple network cables that hang like odd Christmas decorations while awaiting the next step in their installation. And there are giant holes drilled into the ceiling outside the kitchen looking rather alarmingly like evidence of a infestation of giant woodworm (it's not).

But I have learned to knit!