Sunday

The bedroom makeover is in limbo now while we wait for M to have a run of several days without work, or at least a few days with only local work. Apparently that might be three weeks or so. The floor is the next task and it’s not the kind of thing that can be done in short shifts. I’m keen to unwrap our new duvet covers and make decisions on new cushion covers (I’ll probably crochet some) but in the meantime Riley is taking advantage of the pile of old blankets on the bed. He wouldn’t normally be allowed up there.

This morning we took the dogs to the common. I was more than happy to find that the horses were elsewhere for a few months to give the grass a chance to recover. I believe they are wild horses and there are lots of them so when they come trotting over in groups I’m not always comfortable with that. They aren’t little ponies, they are huge great horses. When I was a child I was told that cows don’t charge at people. Turns out that was a whopping fib. I’m not taking any chances with these horses. They can’t have been gone long because there was still plenty of horse dung; luckily neither H or R take much notice of that but they were absolutely fascinated by all the mole hills. Riley peed on each one and Harvey went from hill to hill just digging.

I’m taking refuge in our bedroom again. Football. Yawn. The door is firmly shut and I’m watching a series on iPlayer with the volume loud to drown out the men. Homemade bread, vegemite, green & blacks, Sunday doesn’t get better than this. I’ve completed one teal square towards the four that will be needed for one of my missing weeks of the Scheepjes cal. It’s mind numbingly boring. I’ll alternate it with the ribbed white square but I fear these will take quite a while if I get distracted with something more exciting to work on.

The baby boy knitted leg warmers are finished. I sewed up the seam by leaving two long ends, one in each colour, and using a yarn needle for each. It wasn’t that much of a bother to do a couple of stitches with one colour and then the other and the seam is much more invisible than if I’d used one colour. Another few days of wrist rest and I will be able to tackle the pink pair. A friend has suggested I try the knit pro cubic needles so that I can knit more comfortably and maybe for a bit longer each time. Has anyone else tried those or heard good things about them?

The bedroom project has been incredibly uplifting and advantageous in many ways. One of them is that I feel I’m finally on top of the clothing problem. With just a clothes rail and three drawers in the bedroom at the moment I’ve got the luxury of only being able to have what I actually wear at the moment to hand. Four pairs of jeans, two jumpers, a million t shirts, a couple of shirts and five cardigans. Clearly the t shirts need whittling down. Everything else I own is in Ikea bags in our caravan while we wait for M to build new wardrobes. I can’t see myself bringing much more of that back in here. It’s absolutely wonderful not having all that excess and I’d really like it to stay that way. I will have to impose a one in, one out rule I guess.

M is a bit of a hoarder but he’s also the sort not to really notice if I chuck things he hasn’t worn in a year. Very rarely he asks for something that is long gone and I just say, in a vague tone, that it might be in the caravan wardrobe. He can never be bothered to look so he finds an alternative and forgets all about it. It’s how I declutter his wardrobe. Currently his clothes rail is stuffed full so that he has to prise each garment out. This means he is more likely to throw his clean laundry over any nearby surface rather than hang anything up. Hence tomorrow the secret clothing cull will begin!