January 31 - the weather's been so awful over the last couple of weeks that I'm surprised any of the plants on my fire escape have survived the cold and wind. Most have; some are even in flower. This one's a scented pelargonium - I think it's Village Hall Oak, if not, it's another oak-leaf variety whose name escapes me right now.
January 30 - favourite films
January 29 - marbles in a glass dish
January 28 - in my world, sloppiness in housekeeping relates directly to the amount of work I have to do. Today, no housekeeping at all is being done, but I'm getting through lots of work. And yes, the poached eggs were delicious.
January 27 - Saturday sky, 8am
This looks interesting!
Regia Surprise from Astrid in the Netherlands. It's supposed to give you a different effect depending on the number of stitches you cast on. Hmmm, I'll let you know how it works out; it's next in line after I finish some socks already on the needles. Astrid also has the new Opal Neon which looks rather tasty.
Yet another Royal Mail whinge coming up...
It really p*sses me off when I pay extra to get guaranteed delivery and the folks at the sorting office can't read ignore what it says on the big red sticker. Just as well it got delivered to the right door then.
January 26 - one Project 365 suggestion is to take a snap of yourself every month. This is as far as I want to go with that.
January 25 - definitely the weather for woolly socks
January 24 - Streatham's a little white round the edges this morning
Is Bob really asleep or just pretending?
January 23 - I'm ignoring you; stop poking that camera in my face and get my breakfast...
January 22 - it's Monday again - whatever happened to the weekend?
January 21 - I can see for miles and miles
January 20 - usual Saturday morning bus journey; Clapham Junction to Putney on route 337.
January 19 - I spend a fair amount of my spare time reading. Being a tad anal, I write down the titles/authors in this splendid notebook (made for me by Liz) and grade the books according to their enjoyment level. Looking back, I read 59 books in 2006 (49 fiction, 10 nonfiction). This one, Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood was OK; it had too strong a feminist bias and I didn't enjoy it half as much as Pre-Raphaelites in Love by Gay Daly.
... as I have absolutely nothing on the needles at the moment! Well, that is apart from a couple of pairs of socks chugging along, which don't really count. I'm taking my time deciding what to knit next, partly because of work pressures and partly because I can't decide whether I want to start another shawl, a garment, try out a different sock pattern instead of my usual plain vanilla one, or whatever. No hurry, as most evenings are taken up with work stuff, but it's nice to plan, fondle the stash and look forward to starting something new.
I haven't been entirely idle though.
Two-colour scarf using three skeins of Blue Sky Alpacas Sportweight and a 3.5mm hook - one third of the scarf is fuchsia 530, two thirds are black 510. It's lovely yarn to work with; soft yet substantial with good stitch definition. I like this stitch pattern and I've used it several times before.
January 18 - batten down the hatches!
January 17 - I keep a scrapbook. I use an artist's A4 landscape sketchbook, scissors and a glue stick. When I find something that appeals to me - image, quotation, piece of writing, whatever - I cut it out and stick it down. The only rule I have is to stick new images down where they fit on a page, rather than being consciously selective and grouping all the images of one type together. I like the randomness of colour, shape, pattern and subject matter that appear on the filled pages.
January 16 - back in familiar surroundings
January 15 - another day, another studio, another photo session
