sleepybadger

Today it's somewhat quieter even though the girls are still all here. They are keeping themselves occupied up in their rooms more than hanging out in my basement. Eden and Aria have asked me to walk them to the pond and I said I would go after lunch, but now it's after lunch and they are off doing something else. I'm sure they'll come down soon enough and beg me to go.

Our weather is on a warming trend so I went for a good walk this morning. There are still not really any visible signs of spring although I can hear the birds getting busy when I'm out walking. It's a bit surprising to me how much later spring occurs here than it did in my old home; being a few degrees further north seems to make a big difference.

I am working on the final block for the granny square blanket I started at the beginning of the year (I think - I don't actually remember exactly when I started it), so now I have to decide how to join the blocks. The blocks are green, burgundy, and white, and I'm planning to join them with the white because I think it makes a nice contrast.

I've also got some cream yarn which I wanted to use in this blanket but it turned out to be the wrong gauge (it was too thin - the square I made was smaller than the squares in the other colours) so now I want to use it to make a smaller, baby-size, blanket in a nice lacy pattern. It's a lovely soft drapey yarn.

I had trouble getting to sleep last night but I did manage to sleep until almost 5 this morning even though I think my son in law was moving around earlier than that. The dehumidifier in the basement (in the room next to where I'm sleeping) was running for much of the night. It has been running more over the last day or two because the humidity has risen, and it makes a very good white noise machine. (The wall between the rooms does not go all the way up to the ceiling.) It's a pity I have no control over when it runs, because when the humidity isn't really high it might run for a short time and then cut out, but in more humid weather it runs almost continuously, and I would be happy if it ran all night.

Yesterday I ran out of the yarn I've been using to crochet squares for a blanket (more is coming tomorrow), so I decided to use up some other yarn I've had on hand for a while by knitting a hat as that's all I've got enough for. I wanted to start with a magic circle (because I like knitting hats top down) but I couldn't seem to get the hang of it. I've used a cast on for knitting top down on hats or socks before, but it isn't a magic circle. With a magic circle you get an actual circle with a tail you can use to pull it tight so there is no hole on the top. I spent most of the afternoon looking at videos of people demonstrating this technique, but I don't learn well from videos. Eventually I found a non-video tutorial with pictures and was able to follow that. Everybody seems to have a slightly different way of showing and describing the magic circle, which is confusing for someone who is trying to learn it. Plus I couldn't find a tutorial for a left hander so I had to transpose as I went. My poor brain was very confused. However, with the picture tutorial, I think I've got it.

My Acer computer came back to life! I left it unplugged for about 10 days and then plugged it in and tried to turn it on, not expecting it to work. However, to my great surprise, it came to life almost instantly and has been working just fine since then. I'm very happy because it seems to connect to the (somewhat dodgy) basement wifi better than any other computer I've ever used down there.

The house is *really* quiet today because my son in law started his new job today. He will be working from home some of the time but today he is in New York. (He's not particularly noisy but he is just another person walking around, doing stuff in the house, playing the piano, etc. when he's here.) Unfortunately his commute into the city meant that he was up at 4:15 am and therefore I was awake at that time as well because footsteps above my head always wake me up. Sometimes I'm able to go back to sleep if I'm woken that early but not this morning. I think I'm going to have to start going to bed earlier and getting up earlier in self defence, if this is going to be his normal rising time from now on.

It rained quite heavily last night and the forecast was for possible rain during the day today, but so far it has been very foggy but not raining. It's also weirdly warm (12C/53F when I got up) but we're supposed to have a couple of nights below freezing from tomorrow.

Aria has been helping me with the cat jigsaw puzzle, and I'm very impressed with her visual skills. When I complimented her on how well she was doing, she said "I've done puzzles before".

I was almost completely lazy yesterday although I did do some mild bouncing on my rebounder. The weather forecast was predicting strong winds and temperatures not much above freezing so I decided against going out for a walk because I find wind chill factor very unpleasant, but by the end of the day I was regretting being such a slug. Today I was feeling better than yesterday and I decided to go for a good walk even though it was equally cold (but not windy) and was very glad I did.

A couple of years ago I started watching one of the spin-off movies of Downton Abbey but I didn't like it and didn't finish it. Yesterday I discovered a later spin-off, "Downton Abbey - The Grand Finale" which I watched and enjoyed. Then when that finished another one showed up, called, I think, "Downton Abbey - a New Era" so I started watching that and so far it's ok. It's about a film company proposing to make a movie (silent) at Downton, and of course everybody is horrified at the very idea. It's a bit strange watching this after the grand finale one, because this one is set a few years previously.