Last Night

The in-laws came round for dinner last night. For hors d'oeuvres, I served olives, and pitta bread with a selection of hummous. For the main course I made simple roasted vegetable pies, made with aubergine, courgette, kumara, carrot, red onion and garlic and served these with potatoes and garden peas. For dessert I made a ginger cake from this recipe on the Parsley Soup website

Cats like Yarn!

As much as I love staged, 'posed for' photographs, I also like to take snap shots of a moment in time when people are just doing something ordinary. I have a pretty poor memory (probably due to alcohol abuse in my teens!) and I wish I had more photographs to help me fill in some of the blanks. If you look at my photographs from events, like a family barbeque or a party, you're likely to see as many pictures of people talking and laughing as you are of them posing. Although some people automatically pose when they catch a glimpse of the camera!

Anyway, here is a snap shot of me knitting and battling with my cat!

Warning: These pictures are not particular glamorous nor are they at all flattering to me!

The worst part is when you reach the bit of yarn that he's been chewing and it's still wet and smells of cat food!

Going to Plan

I went shopping at the weekend and ordered a couple of new wardrobes and a new bed. DH has to get the bedroom painted before they arrive - I wonder if thats why he has such a bad cold now? hmm... I've also been bidding away for things on eBay. I'm pleased to have won the drum book I was after, but annoyed at missing out on another book after someone bid 1p more than me. Also missed out on a cross stitch kit, but someone else was willing to pay way more than I was. I've got bids on a couple more kits but will have to see how they go.

At the moment I'm enjoying not being at work and I'm finally getting a chance to finish uploading all my music CDs on to my NAS box.

I wish I could report more interesting things, but so far everything is going to plan - knitting, drumming and uploading music.

Fingerless Mitts

I decided to finish up the mitts using a crochet hook and it worked a treat. I think I'll be sporting my mitts and scarf at work tomorrow!

Needles and Pins

I had my drum lesson on Tuesday night which was excellent. I have some tricky beats to practise but once I get into the flow they seem easy, then I start to relax and lose concentration and it all falls apart. I've put in a bid for a drum book on eBay that my drum teacher recommended. It's still got a few days to go, but hopefully I'll win and get it while I'm off work next week.

So far, I'm planning on spending my time away from work drumming and running. I haven't been able to find any races that really appeal to me although I have found 2 possibilities; the Strathaven 10k in November and the Inverclyde 5k in December. I suppose I ought to just get started and see how I go from there.

I went bowling last night which was great fun. I don't think of it as exercise, but the muscles in my bowling arm are feeling a bit tender today! I met some fun people who were good company and I think everyone had a good time. No danger of me becoming a professional bowler though.

I'm afraid I haven't done much more work on my knitting and crochet projects. I need to get a wool needle so I can stitch up my first knitted fingerless mitt – until then it's just a square. Perhaps that's something else to add to list of things to do next week.

That’s not how you spell dummening

Firstly, I keep meaning to thank my sister again for the moisturiser she gave me for my birthday. It's from Bewitching Beauty and it's amazing stuff. So Jacqueline, if you read this – Thank you!
Secondly, I hate video conferencing – it means my boss can give me a bollocking no matter where he is! Part of the attraction of this job was that my boss was absent for most of the week if I'd known about the phone calls and video conferencing maybe I would have thought twice. Anyway, I suppose I deserved the bollocking. It has taken me an unusually long time to install an OS and standard software on a PC and then at the end of it all when I was cloning the image to an external hard drive I accidentally cloned the empty external hard drive on to the PC I had spent so long preparing. This means in a matter of seconds, I wiped everything off the PC. So now I have to start again from scratch. Not smart.
On a happier note, at least I'm on annual leave next week. I plan to start jogging again next week too. It's going to be hard work starting again, especially at this time of year when there aren't as many 5k and 10k races to train for. I'll need to have a look at Jog Scotland, Runners World and maybe Fetch Everyone too, for some inspiration and something to work towards.

Further Adventures in Cat Sitting

Those pair of kittens never stop! They run around and around; chew cables; scratch the table; pull fridge magnets off the fridge; climb the clothes horse; chew the rug; climb the curtains; attack the tie backs; crawl behind the book case; jump behind the TV cabinet; stand on top of their litter tray and chew the poop scoop; attack each other; climb the cat sitters! All at break-neck speed! It is truly exhausting being in their company for any length of time, I don't know how Ali does it. Here is the cat-sitting montage:

Another energetic pair is my bro-in-law and nephew. They both ran the Stirling 10k today and got personal bests. I'm very proud of them. My nephew, Billy certainly has the running bug now so I'm going to investigate some races they may be interested in next. It's also got me thinking about running too - maybe I'll go for a wee jog tomorrow morning ...