SOLD again!!

 

In a bizarre twist this morning, my buyers pulled out of the house sale.  No reason given.  My estate agent says they've never had anyone pull out of a sale within 24 hours of a legal written offer.  It can happen a few weeks down the line if someone's mortgage isn't approved or their own sale fell through.  But we have no idea why they went to the effort of securing a mortgage and putting in an offer then pulled out so quickly.  Very weird!

BUT, in the rollercoaster that is my life there was a second offer yesterday.  They were told that another higher offer was being considered.  So my estate agent advised me to accept their lower offer this morning (it was £1,000 lower so not much of a difference!) so I did.  And my house was sold again!!  Honestly, you couldn't make this all up!!!!!  My nerves were in shreds!

So I've cast on another sock to calm me down even though I said I wouldn't as I'd get too distracted by it! 🧦 Colours haven't shown up true to life but they're orange and green.  Very bright so a good addition for the leftovers to add colour to my blanket! 

Socks and suds

 

I finished the blue and green socks 🧦  They've grown on me!  They're not this vivid in real life.  It's a sunny day here making them look brighter! 🌞 I'm so pleased I managed to match the stripes but I'm undecided if I should wear them myself or gift them at some point 🎁

I've knitted 2 more squares for my sock blanket.  I love how the same yarn can produce 2 different looking squares🧶 I've got a growing pile of squares to add to the blanket so I'm not casting on the last ball of sock yarn yet.  I need to deal with the squares first!

I went to empty the washing machine only to find it had stopped halfway through the wash  It's got a digital display and it said 'suds' 🙄 It's started doing this a lot!  I've got soft water so I only put in half the recommended dose of Ecover any way.  The machine is about 5 years old now and it moves around when it's spinning.  I have to keep pushing it back under the worktop.  It is also VERY noisy! 🎧 I'm not taking it with me to my new house as I'd like a washer/dryer to save space. My dryer is in the garage.  I rarely use it but my son and DIL use it all the time.  No idea why it's started making so much foam but it's a pain to scoop it all out and rinse off some of the clothes in the sink 👚👖🧦

On being a hermit

I've found myself in a weekly routine of making butter and starting a sourdough loaf one day.  Then baking the bread and a batch of scones (using up the buttermilk) the next day.  Each keeps me going until the following week.  The bread is sliced and added to the freezer with the freshly made scones.  Sometimes I freeze some of the butter too.

And that's about as exciting as my life gets at the moment (plus sock knitting in front of the woodburner!)  But you know what?  I rather like it that way.  The weather here is continually wet and cold so doing inside tasks is as much as my mojo wants to do!  The dogs still get walked daily but I'm happy to be a hermit the rest of the time.  

A few of my dear friends are feeling exactly the same way!

Although in a fit of 'I must get started on getting the house ready to sell' I replied to a local bike charity's appeal for an IKEA Kallex unit.  I'm donating the above unit that holds all my craft supplies.  A whole load of junk and DIY stuff has just been dumped on it too.  I won't have room for it in a smaller house so it seemed a good chance to get rid of it now.  I'll have a bit more space to work in and finally get that room wallpapered!!  It gets collected on Monday so I need to get some sorting out done asap!

The housing market is starting to pick up so I'm keeping an eye on what's available.  My ideal would be a 2 bed cottage with a decent sized garden in the middle of nowhere but that would just encourage me to become a permanent hermit!!  I don't think I'm anti social but I do crave the peace and quiet I never seem to get just now. 

Doing 'stuff'

 

I finished a sock 🧦  It's in a blue/green colourway and I don't love it.  It's one of the Regia Arne and Carlos designs.  But it's a finished sock and I'll cast on the second one tomorrow.  This pair might end up getting gifted.  Or I could be really organised and say I've started my Christmas presents for this year already 🎁😉

The weather is still absolutely appalling so I was very surprised to see that my Sarah Raven tulips are starting to pop up again in the raised bed at the front of my house.  This will be their 3rd year so I'm keen to see how they do this year.  Photo taken through the window but all that greenery is tulip leaves!  🌷🌷🌷

Since my leeks were planted in the same bed I decided to remove them to give the tulips a chance.  This may or may not have been a mistake!!  I've just stuck them in a tub and rinsed them off a bit.  The rain can clean them a bit more before I get round to chopping them up and freezing them tomorrow! 

I've been doing more cooking to stop me buying sweet treats!  Yesterday I made some crepes with the buttermilk from my last batch of butter making.  They were perfect with a squeeze of lemon and a sprinkling of sugar! 🍋

Today I made a rice pudding on the stove top with last of my pudding rice.  I didn't have any kind of milk except some powdered Marvel in the storecupboard so I used that!  I used brown sugar so it has a slight caramel flavour.  Doesn't look great in a photo but oh my, it was delicious!! 😋

My pre ordered seed potatoes from Pennards arrived!  I have Epicure, Cara and Arran Victory.  I've been trying for the last few years to get Epicure as they are the classic early Ayrshire tatties I was brought up on!  I'll do these in pots and the others I'll put in the ground at the allotment.  Cara and Arran Victory grow well for me on the plot 🥔

My Kitchen Garden magazine arrived too!  For the first time in months it didn't contain lettuce seeds!!  I must count up the number of lettuce seeds I have.  I don't even like growing the stuff!!!  I think my subscription must be almost finished.  It was a gift from my Lovely Mum 😊

Even though I've been taking things slowly I've been pottering around and doing loads of 'stuff.'

100 days

 

Happy Boxing Day!!  I spent it knitting, eating and chilling!  I finished another pair of socks (for myself) and cast on a new pair in a green and blue colourway.  I also got a hand knitted pair from my aunt so I'm well stocked up on woolly footwear 🧦

I made myself a sourdough pizza, using some of the tomatoes I got in the TGTG bag.  I put 3 other bases into the freezer to make a quick meal in the future 😋

I part baked them as the dough was quite sticky and I wasn't sure how to keep them separated to freeze.  I hope they're ok next time!

My youngest son and his fiancé have a wee countdown thing to their wedding 👰  From today, it's only 100 days until the big day.  I have my dress already, I just need to make sure I can still fit into it in 100 days!!! 

Pension day!

 

When I was growing up you had to go to the Post Office with your pension book (or Family Allowance book) every week to collect your pension in cash.  Where I lived it was a Thursday and there would be a queue of OAPs (including my Gran) standing outside before 9am waiting for it to open.  Then they'd take that hard cash and go to the Co op supermarket, butcher and greengrocer to get their weekly supplies.  My Gran would famously visit every shop to get the best price on everything.  She never bought everything in one place.

All this to say I got my first pension payment this morning.  Electronically paid into my online account and I was notified by text.  I did have a mild panic when the text said a much smaller amount than I was expecting.  But I get 3 separate payments from the 3 different schemes that I paid into over 35 years 🙄 so I only got 1 text instead of 3.  I checked my account and it's all there! Phew!!  Grand total of £729.14 a month.  It doesn't cover all my expenses (car payments/car insurance/council tax) so I'm relying on my savings to pay those until I sell the house and pay off the car next year.  But reality has now set in! 😱

My dear Gin Queen friend was 60 last week so I splurged and got her a very special gin that has her name on it!  I hope it's a good one!! 🍸 From now on presents will be small and hopefully hand made.  

And my last internet spend for a while (possibly ever!!) was some sock yarn!  I like to have socks on the needles as a pick up and drop activity for Winter.  Someone will get a pair for Christmas and there will be some lovely new colours to add to my leftover sock yarn blanket.

Thank you so much for the good wishes for my Lovely Mum.  I spoke to her last night and she's doing well.  She might get home tomorrow (Saturday) and I'll hopefully be able to go visit her soon 😊

Overgrown!!

 

This is what my plot looks like after 3 weeks of being away unexpectedly.  It's rained heavily but the temperature has been in the high teens so it's a tad wild and overgrown!!! 😱 But thanks to my lovely plot neighbours watering my polytunnel for me, my tomatoes and cucumbers have survived.  Hooray!  The cucumbers are getting a bit unruly but as I've never successfully got any to this stage before I've no idea if they need staked.  Any tips welcome!!

I picked just over a kilo of raspberries!  Some had gone over but there are still loads left to ripen.  It's a lottery getting to them before the rain makes them soggy and inedible.  When I got home I put them straight into the dehydrator.  The smell is amazing!  I've not done this before so it's a bit of an experiment to find new ways to preserve my fruit instead of jam.  I'll report back on how successful they are (or not!)

Lots of 'stuff' is flowering so all is good.  The daisies have just popped up by themselves but I'm happy to leave them.  Not sure what kind they are (they're about 40cm tall) or if they have any culinary or herbal uses.  Everything needs to have a purpose to earn their place!  Let me know if you know!

My garden is similarly wild and overgrown.  In this bed there are sweet peas, sweetcorn, squash, runner beans (I'm doing the Three Sisters method), Jerusalem artichokes and peas.  I'm going to have to sort them out somehow or none of it will be able to produce anything to eat.  

One of the things I did while I was staying at mum's house in between hospital stuff, was stitching some more of my sock yarn squares onto my blanket.  I added the bottom 2 rows so it's now 12 squares by 13 squares.  This is it laid out on a double bed.  I still need to decide how big I want it to be.  I've certainly got enough leftover sock yarn to make it double this size!!  But as it's taken me (on and off) about 10 years to get to this size, it's starting to feel like a never ending project! 🧶

Well that was unexpected!

 

Well the end of my week took an unexpected turn with my Lovely Mum taking ill and going into hospital!  Luckily she's a very fit and healthy 76 year old so it could have been a lot worse.

I've come back to stay in my childhood home which is lovely and weird in equal measure so I can be with her in hospital.  She's expected to make a good recovery but like me, she's an impatient patient!!

While she sleeps I've been knitting my watermelon socks and finished them this morning 🍉🧦 I'll knit some squares for my sock blanket with the leftover yarn.

Oh, and I'm retired now!  I've changed my header and my About me to reflect my new status😊

Miscellaneous few days

 

First roses of the year - Very Berry

My not very happy Old John rose in it's new pot 😔

Lemon Basil, smells delicious already

Old apple tree removal

Weeds from under old apple tree

Currently on the needles

Kitchen wall painting has begun, colour Dulux Heartwood

A new herbal remedy started

ETA:  Jan asked what is an oxymel.  Good explanation HERE if anyone is interested 😊

ETA:  Oxymel recipe for Rachael HERE 😊

New plot video!

I had my online attendance meeting this morning with HR, my Headteacher and my local EIS secretary.  It was pretty straightforward.  

How are you feeling?  Good.  

Is there is anything we can do to help your return to work?  No, I'm retiring and my GP wants to sign me off until my retirement date.  

If there's anything we can do until then just let us know.  Ok, thanks.  

And that was pretty much the gist.  There was no point in dragging up all the things my headteacher did and didn't do.  Allegedly she couldn't get her camera to work so she couldn't even look me in the eyes.  She did say that there's still no input/support from the Pupil Support Service or Educational Psychologist for some of my kids despite us requesting help back in October!!  I didn't expect there to be.  But I'm just done with the whole thing now and can't wait for the last day of term.

Afterwards I went to the allotment and played with my my new cordless strimmer to create paths.  It's a bit rough but you can see the 'grass' aka weed paths beginning to take shape.  Turns out I'd assembled the strimmer guard the wrong way round and the lovely Tesco delivery man fixed it for me this afternoon 😂

I finished another pair of socks.  This was using 2 separate balls of sock yarn to make my own stripes.  Joining the colours was a nightmare and I've got lots of wee threads inside.  Ah well, only I'll know they're there!

Oh and I've got another energy bill for that one day in May 2020.  Last bill said I owed them 64p, this one says I owe them £66 exactly for the same day.  The saga rumbles on...

Shopping, socks and gin cocktails!

 

I've been up since 6am.  I booked a saver delivery slot for £1 between 6am -10 am.  You get given an hour's delivery slot just before 6am so when I got up I knew it was coming between 7.05 and 8.05am.  But I had to check my email for any substitutions.  I refuse to do email on my phone!!  Only sub was 15 eggs for the 12 I had ordered.  Win win, as you get the sub for the lower price!  

When you put it all together it doesn't look much for £92.25 (that's minus the £1 delivery fee) to last me until the end of May with maybe a few fresh fruit/veg top ups.  No meat except bacon rashers and I got a frozen fish pie mix.  Good job I still have a ton of cooked meat in the freezer.

I've been slowly clearing out the 'stuff' from my craft room and my 'room of doom' where all the 'stuff' from the upstairs cupboards was dumped when my son and DIL moved in.  We finally managed to get all their storage boxes into the upstairs cupboards which just leaves mine to clear.  I'm sorting out all my teaching resources into donate/dump piles.  That's taking ages so I do an hour at a time.  I've still got assessment folders full of kids' work from my previous school!!  These kids are all sitting Higher exams right now!  Which proves that all that 'evidence' we have to gather never gets looked at or taken in by anyone in management or the education dept.  Urghhh!  Lots of burning/shredding paperwork is going on as it all has names/DOB etc.

My relaxation is sock knitting 🧦  Here's my latest one hot off the needles last night!  I had an idea to use up wee bits of leftover yarn and make a stripey multicoloured pair.  But it's such a faff joining yarns and I'm not very good/patient at knitting in the tails.  So I stuck to just 2 colours.  The photo doesn't do justice to the lovely bluey green colours.

I'm signed off work for another 4 weeks.  I've not yet been summoned to an attendance meeting so it looks like HR have accepted I'll not be back until I retire.  Not sure if I want to go back for the last week or 2 yet.  I've been told by my work besties that the teacher covering my class of now 14 kids (one has been moved into the other P1 class!!) is struggling with them and has said he doesn't know how I managed without the support he has in place.  In retrospect, I don't know either!!

The planning for my retirement garden party has been taken out of my hands and is being organised by my work besties.  I'm not sure if I'm scared or relieved!!  It's taking on a life of it's own as there's now a Whatsapp group (I'm not in it!) to organise everything.  My previous 2 headteachers have been invited!!  If everyone comes I may have over 40 folk here!! 😱 All I need to do is make the garden look good.  

I bottled the blackcurrant gin liqueur I started last year and started a new rhubarb one with the first rhubarb of the year.  Look at that pretty pink colour already!  Now we've got a start on some cocktail ingredients.  I'm planning on buying Prosecco so we can add some to make a Kir Royale with the blackcurrant gin and maybe a Rhubarb Gin Fizz!   I have an idea to create an Ali Cocktail using things grown in my garden or allotment.  Wee bit of research need I think! 🍸

Team building and tidying up!

Down on the allotment site this morning we had a bit of a barn raising time helping one of our elder members aka Dahlia Man put a new covering on his polytunnel.  He grows thousands of stunning dahlias and hasn't been able to use his polytunnel for 2 years.  It was a fab team building exercise!

In total there were 11 of us mostly holding on to it and making sure the cover didn't blow away while others hammered on the wooden supports!  It took us 48 mins to get the cover over and secure.  And a total of 2 hours to get all the sides dug in and the ends secure.

The finished job!  There's been a change in the committee (not without huge drama!!!) and there are more community events to make the site a better place.  It was actually good fun although I'm exhausted now!!

On the home front this week I've treated myself to a new mini greenhouse so I can harden off all my seedlings.  This one can be anchored to the chicken coop so fingers crossed it won't blow away like my old one!

The chicken enclosure got a good tidy up with the old kennel coop removed.  It took 3 of us to try and dismantle it as the enclosure was built round it.  It wouldn't fit through the door so I had to remove a side of chicken wire and we took it out over my asparagus/strawberry raised bed!  The Eglu was moved under the roof area so it doesn't get as wet in the rain.  I still need to prune back the ivy and put a ton of fresh sawdust down.

I filled a skip with all the bits of 'stuff' lying round the garage and the back garden.  I'm having a retirement garden party at the end of June and I want the garden to look nice.  The rules about what can go in a skip now are very strict, everything has to be recyclable.  So it was a good chance to get rid of a lot of big old pieces of wood and broken garden furniture.  Mostly stuff that wouldn't fit into my wee car to take to the tip. 

I finished the socks I was knitting for my DIL and she loves them! 🧦

We seem to be having a nice run of lovely sunny weather so hopefully I'll get more allotment stuff done before the rain returns! ☔🌧

Feeling fruity!

 

I had my appt with the mental health practitioner this morning.  Waste of time, he was useless.  He talked over me for 30 mins about himself!!  Opening line to me "What are you stressed about?  Work?"  Quickly followed up by "Have you thought about retiring?"  Thank goodness I wasn't in dire need of help or that I had to pay for it.  And he stank of cigarette smoke 🤮  But it ticked the box so I can get my Fit Note extended next week.  As I was out and about nice and early I managed to score a decent £1.50 fruit/veg box at Lidl.  First one for aaaaages!

I peeled and chopped the 12 apples and 5 pears.  Only 1 apple was completely rotten right through and some were a bit bashed.  I squeezed the satsuma juice into my big pot and gently cooked the fruit for about 20 mins.  Because they were eating apples they didn't break down and I didn't add any sugar as they are sweet enough.  Once they'd cooled a bit I added a wee bit of local honey.  They're now portioned up into single portions and in the freezer.  I think they'll be good for yoghurt or porridge or even a wee healthy fruit crumble!

I sliced and diced the peppers with some of the Tesco 19p onions.  They're really useful to have in the freezer for stir fries and fajitas 😋

Sadly the peaches and nectarines were a bit rotten from the stone out, even the chicken refused to try one!  Clever bird!!  But I had the plums with my lunch, they were nice.

I've started saving chopped up bits n pieces of veggies in wee pots if I've done too much.  They're really handy to pull out the freezer and boost the veg content.  I had a stir fry for tea last night with frozen peas, sweetcorn, red onion, spring onion and spinach plus a tub of cooked chicken 😋  I'm loving my freezer right now!!

As well as knitting socks, I've also been working on sewing up my cardigan!  Soooo many loose ends to weave in!! ✂  But I'm making progress!  It might even be finished in time for the hottest part of the year!!!! 😂