Hello!

I have a question...

On The Archers a couple of weeks ago Mike was boring everyone to tears with in depth monologues about how to tell if an acorn was "viable" by putting it in a bucket of water. This was only marginally less tedious than Vicky rabbiting on about her patio heaters. Unfortunately I have forgotten whether the dud acorns float or sink.

This matters because it just so happens that an acorn has just come into my possession and I would quite like to try and see if it will germinate.

Do you happen to know anything about growing trees from seed?

Or could you point me in the direction of a useful guide?

n  

PS. And in the light of yesterday's sad news, Norman Painting, aka Phil Archer, R.I.P.

PPS. Did anyone see Le Restorrrron with Raymond Blanc last night? Those women trying to open a can with a large knife and a rolling pin had me peering through my fingers. I was sure someone was going to end up in Casualty any minute.

Ping!

  

Something just happened.

I was sitting here minding my own business, and there was an email ping. You know, that little noise which beeps, pings or sings to let you know an email has arrived.

Could be from family, or from a friend or maybe work.

I glanced at the Inbox.

A new customer had created an account.

I went back to what I was doing.

3 minutes later, another ping. An order.

I opened the email and realised that something fantastic just happened. 

The order number had been hovering in the high nine-hundreds for a while, but I have been pretty busy this week and I haven't really been looking at the numbers.

This was order 1,000.

A thousand orders in just over year. A thousand parcels.

This does not include clubs, with a bit of mental arithmetic, that's another thousand, at least. And it doesn't include Woolfest.

Gosh.

GOSH.

Thank you. Thank you EVERYONE who has bought something from me in the last three and a bit years.

Gosh.....

n

New yarn!

 

1267

  

 

1269

  

1270

These are all 70% baby alpaca, 20% silk and 10% cashmere and offer 800m/100g which is plenty for most shawl projects... they are in pairs though so if you need two matching skeins for something bigger, you can have them!

There are more colours in the shop, and browsing is free!

n

11D and 13D

I am stuck and resisting the urge to consult google.

Really should know about Twelfth Night, this is ridiculous!

Thank you for all the comments about my glasses. I rang my old optician (she isn't actually old, you understand) and the things she had to say about this brand of lenses (Pentax) were less than complimentary. It seems I am far from alone and it's a known problem in the optometry world. One of her clients had gone to the same dispensing company as I did with eight of his friends and they all got varifocals and not one of them could use them.

It would seem that it's not me, it's them.

They told me that if I wasn't happy I could have a refund so I'm taking them back and going to start again from scratch with another eye test and then I'll work out what to do from there. 

Mr. Varifocal Inventor has a reprieve for now.

n

I can see clearly now.

Well, that was my expectation.

I have worn glasses for reading for about seven years, the prescription has changed slightly but I only needed them for knitting and reading until recently when I found myself putting them on in the morning and wearing them for most of the day to do mid-range stuff like cooking and ironing (!) and dyeing.

I decided a few weeks ago that perhaps I should have my eyes tested again, and off I went to the optician, and emerged half an hour later with a stronger close-work prescription and a slight long distance correction, not much, but enough that I would feel the benefit.

Like most households in which there resides a reading glasses wearer, there is a daily, or let's be honest, the hourly squawk of

"Where are my (insert your expletive of choice) glasses?"  

Anxious to move on from this situation I figured it was time to consider varifocals. I researched, and looked at the information provided by the opticians, and came to the conclusion that the cheaper lenses were likely to turn the home situation one in which glasses would be hurled across the room rather than just sat upon, as happened recently... and no, it wasn't my bottom which did the sitting. And he wears glasses all the time so there was really no excuse. I digress.

So I chose frames. This in itself was a bit of a task. The current fashion is for Gok Wan style specs with rectangular frames and huge wedge-of-cheddar shaped legs (or is it arms) at the side in any colour you like, shiny, matte, bejewelled (my spell-checker says bejewelled has one L but I think it looks better with two), chequered, striped and wiggly. 

I wanted a brown pair, and an olive green pair. You would have thought this was an easy thing to achieve with four opticians in the shopping mall within staggering-blindly distance of each other. You would be wrong.

Eventually I chose a black everyday type pair, paid £300 for frames and lenses and then waited two weeks to go and collect them. I was told that I would need to adjust to them and not to give up straight away. I was sanguine, sure that such advice was for other mortals. I am a grown up after all. Honestly, I am.

  

 

What a complete con.

They are, after a week of trying really, really hard, manageable. JUST.

The phrase "Jack of all trades and master of none" comes to mind. The upper area, for distance, is better than without them, but it's marginal, it's only a +1 prescription so not a huge difference. But it doesn't extend all the way across the top of the lens so things like driving are much harder, instead of looking to the left or right when I come to a junction, I now have to turn into a contortionist and move my head to 90 or more degrees in order to look out of the middle of the top of the lens because that's the only bit that's in focus. Road signs and traffic lights, which I could previously see clearly are hazy. And given my ongoing inability to tell right from left as mentioned in previous posts I may need to employ Ray Mears to sit in the passenger seat and direction-find for me because road signs which tell you where to go at the next junction are migraine inducing. Thank goodness I don't live near Birmingham, pasta city of the world.

I went to the theatre last week, and was able to see the stage clearly from the Upper Circle. But only if I bent forward and looked through the top of the lens, simply moving my eyeballs downwards mean I was looking through the Computer Distance Bit of the lens. 

Aaaah. The Computer Distance Bit. The holy grail for a the middle aged spectacle wearer who is looking for a single pair of glasses because they don't want to be like Professor Branestawm. 

"He has five pairs of spectacles– one for reading, one for writing, one for out of doors, one for looking at you over the top of and a fifth pair for looking for the others on the frequent occasions when they get lost. Other pairs of spectacles are often mentioned."  Wikipedia.

The close work part of the lens is OK. Not bad. Better (i.e. stronger) than my old reading glasses, so I'll admit it's an improvement. 

But the Computer Distance Bit is a joke. I am sorry, Mr. Varifocal Inventor, but the Computer Bit is a rubbish.

For a start it seems to be meant for desktops. And of course the crucial thing about a desktop is that the keyboard and the screen are separated from each other. I use a laptop, so when I look at the keyboard through the bottom of the lens and have it in focus - we won't mention it looking as though it has developed a curvature resembling the earth as seen from Apollo 8 - the screen is blurred. If I move the laptop so that the screen is in focus, I am so far from the keyboard that I'm getting a shoulder-joint workout and my elbows aren't on the table. Great arm-exercise but I'm not sure that one of the selling points of varifocals to aforementioned middle aged ladies it their double-duty as Bingo Wings Reduction Devices.

The section of the lens I can actually see through - you know, the reason you wear glasses at all, to help you see things, is tiny. I mean, really, really tiny.

And remember I paid for the sooper dooper expensive lenses so heaven alone knows what it's like in the cheaper ones. I can see the centre of the laptop screen, not the top, not the bottom, not the sides. 

The centre. And that's it.

To see the rest of it I have to move my whole head, "point with your nose", the optician said. So I point with my nose, and I can indeed see the top, but then I need to point my flipping nose to the side or the middle or the left to see another part of the image - and we are only talking about a 13" macbook here, not a stonking great 27 inch iMac. 

I feel as though I am bobbing about like a demented chicken, Mr. Varifocal Inventor. Web pages are meant to be seen as a whole, not as a collection of snapshots. I know they aren't exactly classical art, but really, this is ridiculous.

  

 

In short, varifocals are the Emperor's New Clothes of the spectacle world. Everyone buys into the hype and pays lots of money for them and then tells everyone else how wonderful they are. And I am perfectly prepared to accept that for some people they are indeed wonderful. But for me, they aren't. 

I will persist with them for a bit longer, but I am not hopeful. 

Varifocals is a misnomer.

Smudge-focals would be nearer to the mark.

n

In the interests of smudgeyness. I have yarn for the shop...

  

 

See, even the camera has given up trying to focus.

  

Tuppence a bag.

Today is Feed the Birds day, organised by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. 

Over the last week I have noticed garden birds I haven't seen for months, like the Robin. Where do Robins go in the Summer? I think I have seen three of them, but only two at the same time so they may be cheating. Robins look so friendly and wouldn't-say-boo-to-a-goose, but in fact they are very territorial, and you almost never see two at the same time unless they are husband and wife or having a fight - or both, I suppose!

I like the RSPB, but I am rather partial to the British Trust for Ornithology.

This is the RSPB page for the Robin.

And this is the BTO page. 

The BTO page brings out my inner geek. I love being able to find out that the average lifespan is just two years, but that the oldest one recorded is 8 years and 4 months... and clearly they like Spain as a retirement destination because the oldest one there was 11 years and 5 months. (I know they don't migrate but it's a nice idea.)

They are called Roodborst in the Netherlands and Glóbrystingur in Iceland. 

And astonishingly, at just 18g, you get 3 Robins per skein of Clan and five Robins for a skein of Toddy. 

I told you I was a geek.

I'm off to scrub off the bird table.

n

The aftermath.

I don't "do" politics on the blog. 

It's probably pretty apparent that I'm a Guardian reading liberal who has a wardrobe consisting of Birkenstocks, hand-knitted socks, a bra made by Balfour Beatty, M&S knickers (like the rest of the population) and whatever happens to be handy thrown on top. My jewellery is Fair Trade silver, and I have a metaphorical United Nations Blue Helmet to wear when it rains.

My approach to political censorship is largely "I may not like what you say, but I absolutely defend your right to say it".

I watched Question Time last night, along with, it seems, most of the rest of the population. Twitter was racking up 1,500 comments about it every minute. 

What I think about the policies and the leadership of the BNP is unprintable. 

It seems that most of the rest of the population are in accord.

In my view the BNP have risen to where they are now because of complacency, because it is regarded as a chore to go and vote. Especially if it is raining.

I regard voting as my right, and my duty. 

If Question Time has made other people feel that they must vote to stop this man and his party, then that can only be good. I don't mind who people vote for, only that they do. 

I have complete confidence that even though people may not agree with me in terms of my party politics (and I have voted for three different parties in my voting-lifetime), if they actually went to a polling station and put a cross or a number on a ballot paper, they darn sure wouldn't agree with him.

Normal Woolly Service will be resumed tomorrow.

n

Gobstoppers in the shop!

The photos are awful but I have been persuaded that this doesn't matter!

Sweetshop.

Just got to work out how you tie a label on a Gobstopper...

n

Gobstopper

Coming to an update near you soon.

 

I just need to borrow a decent camera first!

n

Music and movement.

When I was at primary school, we didn't do PE, or what my sons called "Gym"... we did Music and Movement. It wasn't a particularly swanky place, just an ordinary state school, but perhaps they had delusions of being more exclusive than they actually were, I don't know. I don't remember much about the actual classes, so I can't say they inspired me or otherwise.

When I got to high school I was immediately plunged into PE Proper. 

Hockey - I played Left Back (should probably have been Left Behind but we'll not go there).

Javelin - about the only athletic-y thing I was any good at.

Swimming - they taught me to swim when I was twelve which seems very late nowadays when most kids seem to be hurled into the water before their first birthday.

Cross Country - we only did this when there was ice on the puddles and it was foggy. Very odd.

Although I felt chest-heavingly unfit on these runs I can't actually have been so awful, my school was over a mile from home, up a long slow hill, and I cycled, winter and summer (with my hands so cold that when the blood came back to my fingers I felt nauseous) until I went into fifth year, and after that I walked, unraveling the day in both directions with a girl who lived up the road from me. In six years I doubt if I got a lift more than a dozen times. There was no bus. Rain, wind, snow and sun, I was self propelled. 

Several times a week I walked to the library, a mile there and back, or to the shop on a Saturday to get forgotten items of shopping, another two mile round trip.

I went on YHA walking holidays in the Cotswolds and the Peak District and in sixth year I started to do conservation work at weekends, building fences, footpaths, steps, footbridges and drystone walls. And on the weekends when I wasn't doing that, I was hill-walking and camping. I spent the summer after I left school helping to put a surveying grid down in Ariundle, the last natural oak woodland in Scotland. I helped to build a drystone retaining wall at Knockan, near Ullapool, and was part of a group putting a footpath up Beinn Eighe (we did the highest section so that meant a significant climb before we started in the morning, it's 3,314 feet high - 1010m). I worked on Skye and in the Cairngorms as well. It was quite a summer.

After that I worked on a big organic farm, driving a tractor - it took me another 12 years to get a motorbike licence and six more after that to be deemed competent enough to be let loose in a car. I built fences, planted stuff, harvested it, and loaded vans of produce for the market. It was three miles to the pub!

And then I took up rock-climbing and ice-climbing and dabbled at caving (very scary stuff, never ever again), did cross-country skiing, and cycled from Edinburgh to London and back (on my own), and around Brittany. 

And then somehow, with children and not being able to drive when they were small (a three year old and a one year old tied onto the back of a Kawasaki 500 is likely to cause attention), I stopped doing these things. Working shifts scuppered the weekends away when my friends were off doing new routes on the crags, and I just never went back to it. And being a single mum for a while didn't help either.

Now I am struggling with exercise, and if I look back at the stuff I did then, it wasn't to keep fit, it was because it was fun. I am swimming the channel (virtually) at the moment, and trying to get enthused about going to the gym, which I am doing because I need to rather than because I want to. And it struck me this morning that "fun" is what's missing.

And then I saw this.

 

Fun. With knobs on.

In the absence of a staircase like this, I think I might go and find a hill to walk up this weekend. Not a big hill you understand. A small one will do just fine. Any suggestions?

n

 

PS What do you do now for keep fit, which is fun too? 

PPS I can't dance for toffee, totally uncoordinated, so that's no use :(