janewilliams20 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
janewilliams20) wrote2007-04-18 12:45 pm
janewilliams20) wrote2007-04-18 12:45 pm
Yes, I'm still here. Sleeping, gardening, writing, not posting
Been de-stressing and hence not updating much. So a catch-up, with multiple cut-tags.
Weekend - Pete and Shirley came round for Saturday afternoon and evening.
We keep intending to get together whenever we have a mutual free weekend, and realised that the last time we'd managed it was over a year ago :(
(Editted in later):
They turned up at about 2ish, and we chatted, and Shirley got me to get the harp out and nagged me to play something because it sounds so lovely. Hmm. Brian Boru, one hand only. Plus a few others, rather slowly: the Vaurien Variant, Calon Lan (with the left hand, eventually!), Hunting the Hare. I really should practice more. More than zero, that is.
Shirley's looking to replace her Little Car, and rather fancied something like mine. So we went and admired and inspected in detail, and she drove it round the block and saw how easy it was to park. Audi aren't making A2s any more, but she thinks the lease deal with her new job will allow cars up to a couple of years old.
Evening, we were cooking Creole/Cajun. Dave's idea, he had recipes he wanted to play with. Which, for reasons to do with his apparent inability to do ANYTHING while talking, I ended up cooking... the starter was a thing with Hollandaise sauce on a pile of muffin, artichokes, anchovies, and poached egg (actually the muffin was a slice of toast from a wheat-free loaf, because of Shirley's dietary requirements), main was Louisiana seafood paella (yum!), and a corn&tomato side dish I'd found in the same book. Dessert, something called "ambrosia", which is basically fruit salad. Pineapple, orange, banana, maraschino cherries. Meant to have dessicated coconut in there, but there wasn't any in the shops. Yes, we cooked too much food. My membership of Over-Caterers Anonymous is still intact.
Sunday, caught up on some sleep. Sort of. Up at 6 as usual, partly due to Dave snoring, started up laptop, stared at it, went for a nap on the sofa. Dave woke me around 10 with a coffee. Wandered around vaguely, decided around 11-ish to get dressed, wandered upstairs, thought "bed, mm..." and woke up again around 12. Ah well, I must have needed it. (And the seafood paella we had for lunch was actually even better after the re-heat!)
Sunday afternoon was Summer, and this year I didn't miss it due to being in the shower. So we did things in the garden, then realised it was too hot for that (yes, really!) and that the strimmer had broken. Dossed some more, hit the garden properly around 5. The front bed now contains one less bush, a lot less grass and dandelions, and is disturbingly tidy. Also bare :(
Monday... work, the usual. Helen's birthday, and I now have a really nice source of E-cards, so I used it. It had been a couple of days since I last did a note/card to Enid, so I found a Monet garden picture and wrote something cheery inside about gardens, summer, and the poor Irish only having forty shades of green, whereas I now had at least that many merely as stains on hands and Tshirt. In internal post. This writing of cheery notes and silly stories to a short deadline is improving my writing, I think. Never done so many pure descriptive passages before in me life. How many ways can one say "flowers are pretty, kittens are cute", while keeping it interesting and amusing, and avoiding various potentially painful subjects? Well, I haven't run out yet. Writing is something I can do, so if it can have a positive result, I'm doing it.
Should have gone back to slimming/exercise class in the evening, but still feeling tired (and achey from the gardening), so skipped it. Instead, pulled out the fabric for Dave's new cloak. Semi-circular, lined. I'd got the fabric at the last re-enactor's market. Cloaks are easy enough, now I know how (did two little ones for Tracey's girls a Letton or two ago). Take fabric twice as long as it is wide. Marke centre of one edge - that's your back of neck. Draw a semi-circle as big as will fit. Cut out a neck hole. Use the two spare corners to make a hood with liri-pipe. You assemble the hood, fit it to the neck, for both main fabric and lining, then sew both together round the edges, leaving a gap to turn. Turn, add neck clasp of some sort, finish the gap you left for turning. I have yet to do those last two, but the main job is done, and looks good to me.
And then, late at night, I did a final check of email/LJ, and found Vaurien's post saying that Enid had died. Oh. Oh, various words that won't be appreciated by filters. Yes, it was expected, yes, it was as he says, in many ways a relief, yes, she went in the best way that could be expected under the circumstances, but even so... Didn't wake Dave to supply hugs, it's not fair. Bears are perfectly capable of soaking up tears. I expect I'll drivel on more about this over the next few weeks, I'm just starting to realise how much she meant to me. Dave did the sums - I'd known her for 18 years.
Ah well, on to more cheerful topics. Tuesday night, I went back to back-swording class for the first time for far too long - and was greeted with multiple hugs. They're a lovely lot. I skipped the more energetic bit of the warm-up, and didn't quite manage ten full reps of every exercise, but I've remembered most of it, got through all of drills 1-5 after a quick refresh (and I wasn't the only one who needed it!), and answered a reasonable number of the theory questions. I won't be doing my green&white grading with the rest, but that's because I don't have the speed, or strength, or stamina. Or the sparring experience. The straight knowledge, I'd say I've got, it's applying it is the problem. Practice. And get back to more exercise.
Weekend - Pete and Shirley came round for Saturday afternoon and evening.
We keep intending to get together whenever we have a mutual free weekend, and realised that the last time we'd managed it was over a year ago :(
(Editted in later):
They turned up at about 2ish, and we chatted, and Shirley got me to get the harp out and nagged me to play something because it sounds so lovely. Hmm. Brian Boru, one hand only. Plus a few others, rather slowly: the Vaurien Variant, Calon Lan (with the left hand, eventually!), Hunting the Hare. I really should practice more. More than zero, that is.
Shirley's looking to replace her Little Car, and rather fancied something like mine. So we went and admired and inspected in detail, and she drove it round the block and saw how easy it was to park. Audi aren't making A2s any more, but she thinks the lease deal with her new job will allow cars up to a couple of years old.
Evening, we were cooking Creole/Cajun. Dave's idea, he had recipes he wanted to play with. Which, for reasons to do with his apparent inability to do ANYTHING while talking, I ended up cooking... the starter was a thing with Hollandaise sauce on a pile of muffin, artichokes, anchovies, and poached egg (actually the muffin was a slice of toast from a wheat-free loaf, because of Shirley's dietary requirements), main was Louisiana seafood paella (yum!), and a corn&tomato side dish I'd found in the same book. Dessert, something called "ambrosia", which is basically fruit salad. Pineapple, orange, banana, maraschino cherries. Meant to have dessicated coconut in there, but there wasn't any in the shops. Yes, we cooked too much food. My membership of Over-Caterers Anonymous is still intact.
Sunday, caught up on some sleep. Sort of. Up at 6 as usual, partly due to Dave snoring, started up laptop, stared at it, went for a nap on the sofa. Dave woke me around 10 with a coffee. Wandered around vaguely, decided around 11-ish to get dressed, wandered upstairs, thought "bed, mm..." and woke up again around 12. Ah well, I must have needed it. (And the seafood paella we had for lunch was actually even better after the re-heat!)
Sunday afternoon was Summer, and this year I didn't miss it due to being in the shower. So we did things in the garden, then realised it was too hot for that (yes, really!) and that the strimmer had broken. Dossed some more, hit the garden properly around 5. The front bed now contains one less bush, a lot less grass and dandelions, and is disturbingly tidy. Also bare :(
Monday... work, the usual. Helen's birthday, and I now have a really nice source of E-cards, so I used it. It had been a couple of days since I last did a note/card to Enid, so I found a Monet garden picture and wrote something cheery inside about gardens, summer, and the poor Irish only having forty shades of green, whereas I now had at least that many merely as stains on hands and Tshirt. In internal post. This writing of cheery notes and silly stories to a short deadline is improving my writing, I think. Never done so many pure descriptive passages before in me life. How many ways can one say "flowers are pretty, kittens are cute", while keeping it interesting and amusing, and avoiding various potentially painful subjects? Well, I haven't run out yet. Writing is something I can do, so if it can have a positive result, I'm doing it.
Should have gone back to slimming/exercise class in the evening, but still feeling tired (and achey from the gardening), so skipped it. Instead, pulled out the fabric for Dave's new cloak. Semi-circular, lined. I'd got the fabric at the last re-enactor's market. Cloaks are easy enough, now I know how (did two little ones for Tracey's girls a Letton or two ago). Take fabric twice as long as it is wide. Marke centre of one edge - that's your back of neck. Draw a semi-circle as big as will fit. Cut out a neck hole. Use the two spare corners to make a hood with liri-pipe. You assemble the hood, fit it to the neck, for both main fabric and lining, then sew both together round the edges, leaving a gap to turn. Turn, add neck clasp of some sort, finish the gap you left for turning. I have yet to do those last two, but the main job is done, and looks good to me.
And then, late at night, I did a final check of email/LJ, and found Vaurien's post saying that Enid had died. Oh. Oh, various words that won't be appreciated by filters. Yes, it was expected, yes, it was as he says, in many ways a relief, yes, she went in the best way that could be expected under the circumstances, but even so... Didn't wake Dave to supply hugs, it's not fair. Bears are perfectly capable of soaking up tears. I expect I'll drivel on more about this over the next few weeks, I'm just starting to realise how much she meant to me. Dave did the sums - I'd known her for 18 years.
Ah well, on to more cheerful topics. Tuesday night, I went back to back-swording class for the first time for far too long - and was greeted with multiple hugs. They're a lovely lot. I skipped the more energetic bit of the warm-up, and didn't quite manage ten full reps of every exercise, but I've remembered most of it, got through all of drills 1-5 after a quick refresh (and I wasn't the only one who needed it!), and answered a reasonable number of the theory questions. I won't be doing my green&white grading with the rest, but that's because I don't have the speed, or strength, or stamina. Or the sparring experience. The straight knowledge, I'd say I've got, it's applying it is the problem. Practice. And get back to more exercise.
no subject
Backswording
http://www.backswording.co.uk/
Re: Backswording