Holidays

 

Firstly, thanks for the advice that was given re my camera - it is definitely an error with the card, so when I have a moment or two to think about it, I shall try some of the suggestions.

I am a bit miffed that my pictures of Zurich seem to be 'lost' but let's face it. with all the awful things that happen, it shouldn't even be on a list of disappointments...

Last week I was on Skye at Sabhal Mor Ostaig, the Gaelic college. This is the third year that I have gone up for a week's tuition and I have been filled with vim and vigour! We had a wonderful tutor for the week. Therefore I am forging ahead with my Gaelic studies and have applied for An Cùrsa Adhartais - according to the college, at the end of this two year distance learning course I should be fluent......I am hoping to add another language or two to my repertoire, so soon I'll be unstoppable in about 3 languages :0)

Number Guy had a great week while I was in class - I would like to think the fact that I was in class had nothing to do with it...anyway, he went to Applecross and I was more than a little jealous, since the day was marvelous and hence the views were also. He did make it up to me though - we went to Kinloch Lodge for dinner. It was marvelous. It was expensive. So we went only once ;0)

Of course, I cannot show you any pictures from Skye since I didn't have a working camera....but having bought a new card today, I decided to try it out. Without much to inspire me, I decided on a few garden pics - here is a a wee comparison of the yarn bought in Zurich our very first clematis.

And this is kind of how I would like our back garden to look - a profusion of tumbling flowers. At the moment we have a profusion of overgrown grass and weeds

Right, back to the grindstone - I've been LaTeXing the little bit of the assignment that I've done. I can do only so much work on the PC before I need a hard copy to be able to make sense of it all. For those of you not familiar with LaTeX it is a really useful document preparation tool, which I have mentioned previously. However, one has to type in all the formatting commands and then instruct the programme to build the document. Inevitably there are errors, so then one has to go through the work and painstakingly fix these before the file document can be built. As I am a new user, I have more errors than most. One it's done, though, a rather nice PDF is created which I can print and read.

But only once it's done....

Update Chez India

 

Well, seems like a lot has been happening here of late, but when I stop to consider, there hasn't been much at all. I think that soaking up the sun (well, dappled shade, actually) must be really hard work.

I'm still off work, having various investigations - honest to goodness, I reckon I'm going to get Frequent Flyer miles with the NHS fairly soon...
On a strangely positive note, I had a mini cardiac episode yesterday. It was positive becasue I had the Cardio Call event monitor with me, similar to the one in the link. The 24 hour and 5 day machines have so far failed to catch anything, but the Cardio Call is all mine for 1 month. Although I didn't have any arrythmia, I did have the tachycardia, so at least they caught that!
In the meantime, I am trying to get as much gentle exercise as I can (note to self, digging out a compacted compost heap is not gentle exercise and it's no bloomin' wonder you felt so unwell after....). On that note, Number Guy made me a raised bed and I pretended to be Lady Rosemary. pottering about with various seeds and salad vegetables.

As you can see, this is not the biggest bed in the world - more of a narrow single than a queen- or king-size. I've snuggled up beetroot next to spinach at the head of the bed, while the foot end is seeing a Three Sisters set up. It might not work - probably won't !- but it's a bit of fun.

When I haven't been pottering in the garden, I've been doing a little more sewing (two types of sewing in one blog, eh?!). First up, a denim 'Thai fisher skirt' . Like the first one I made, I love it.

Particularly the metal buttons that I added to three of the four raw seams

Flushed with that success, I made a doorstop to keep the two great escapers where I want them. Like other folk who have made this , I found that the '5lb of dried beans' was a bit of an underestimate. I stopped after I had used all of the out-of-date pulses and rice that I could find lurking in the cupboards (which was a scary 81/2 lbs...) The pattern is from Simple Sewing, Lotta Jansdotter. For a newbie sewer like me, this is an excellent book - the fact that the full-size patterns are included, is a big plus.

Well, on that note, I'm off to think a bit about my assignments - I'm trying to make use of the time off to catch up on this work, as I wasn't up to it previously.
I may be some time....