The Dreaming Knitronomicon

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I bought a pair of them from Amazon, had them delivered to the PO, thinking I'd collect them on the way back from the dentist, only the dentist cancelled on me. So I went out after the usual Wednesday afternoon Zoom chat, instead. Pretty much exactly what I wanted/needed. I've assembled one and put it in place, and the other one is in storage for if/when I need that.

"

New fridge arrived at about 12.15, or a little after; The deliverymen handily got the top-box down for me, jiggled the old fridge out (I had to hide behind the closed door while they got it past the corners in the living room), and got the new one in. It had to sit for at least two hours, probably got three, before being turned on; it is now on, and cooling down - though I can't find the at-least two fridge thermometers I took out of the old one... I expect they're in a bag. The milk has so far lasted OK, standing in a cool bag surrounded by other things, but after I'd eaten I had a nap and have been to Iceland, so an illicit 2L of milk and 6 creme caramel pots are now in the new fridge. It's supposed to want 6 hours, according to the manual, but I expect it can cope with that much after four.

The only disadvantage of it is that the doors don't open completely flat sideways, so I'm going to have to rejig what stands in front of it so I can get round the 'corner' to get things in and out. I'm gradually unpacking a bag at a time of stuff that came out of the kitchen (or was moved from the hall/living-room). The 'veg rack' (originally bought in the 1970s, I think - I had a pair of them, which I bought for paperback bookshelves!) desperately needs cleaning, sorting out, and restacking. And the shelves in the kitchen were emptied and moved for the installation, so they've got to be refilled. And of course the food... I fully expect to be dumping all the frozen stuff, though I knew there wasn't much hope of saving it; but at least it's not a lot. I shall do what I can of that sort of thing tomorrow (I'm pretty much knackered tonight, though might get a few things rearranged), and hope to go out to knit group as normal.

Hmmm. And it's been a year since I posted, it seems. There *was* six months of chaos following the flood last year, of course. Mostly sorted (two new shelving units, lots of unpacking, packing, re-unpacking, lather-rinse-repeat) & I still have 3 tubs of what S & N packed for me stacked in the bedroom, & still haven't got rid of my archery equipment.

Various other things have happened - I went to stay with lexin in December, & had a reasonable holiday, as usual, though I seemed to have gone almost completely deaf in my right ear just beforehand, which was ... interesting ... and has led to me getting hearing aids this year!

I went to the filk con in February, a friend died in May & I went to her funeral in early June; and I've just (on Monday) got back from another lovely 2-week stay with lexin in Bangor, where we had numerous outings!

( List of the out and abouts )

Week one, done!

( Week Two )

I came home on Monday with a slight sense of dread, but nothing seems to have disastered this time. Tomorrow morning I have someone coming on behalf of the council to do a 'condition survey', which I do have a slight feeling of dread about, as they may be recommending a new bathroom, which I shall fight because if they do I'll probably lose my washing lines.

Yeah, I know I haven't updated in forever. Still here. Just about.

I had a lovely 2 weeks of holiday in N. Wales with lexin, and got back last Tuesday (June 25th) to find that my toilet cistern had been leaking for goodness knows how long. Both bathroom & the forward edge of the bedroom *splashed*. Water was gushing into the bath from the official overflow (stupid arrangement, why couldn't it have been directed straight into the drain?) AND pouring out of the cistern itself. Instead of unpacking, I dumped my case straight into the living room, and called the council's repair line; a plumber attended reasonably soon, and 'capped' the cistern; told me I could use a bucket & that someone would come the next day to do a better fix, also some mopper-uppers; he mentioned an aquavac, but when they did come on Wednesday they said there wasn't enough water (no, because by then it had soaked in to ... everything), so they mopped with detergent/disinfectant, which stank so badly I had to go outside.

Friends N & S, who live in Kentish Town, offered me the bedsettee in their living room - not ideal for any of us, but better than nothing. All the council could offer was a 'hostel'. Um, maybe not. I've had a mould-wash person round on July 1st to paint the mould that was growing on bathroom AND bedroom walls (!!!!!) with mould killer & sealant; a 'damp inspector' is due to come on Thursday 11th.

N & S, and I, and another friend A, have worked hard to get everything off the ground, dried out as much as possible, and out of the way ... which means ON THE BED. A lot of stuff has had to be thrown away. Both bedside rugs, for instance. N has put a lot of damp clothing, towels, etc, through her washer. Can't really put stuff back till the inspector has been & decided whether or not I need dehumidifiers and if so for how long!

So early this morning I woke up and coughed up a lump of phlegmy gunk, which happens; the cough has actually been getting better (maybe it's the loooooooong walk to/from either possible bus stop to N's!). However, this left me with a nasty short dry cough, so after I'd had breakfast, I walked to the bus-stop, got home, and got my COVID tests out.

Yup. *BUGGER* So I'm 'sleeping' on my sofa tonight, with a footstool in front of it for my legs (padded with one or two camping cushions & a thick towel). N & S will be round tomorrow to try & pack everything on the bed into boxes to be stacked on the FAR side, so I can sleep in it, despite the mould. (I ... haven't actually ventured into the Knitronomicorner, which was wet through at ground level [don't worry, all yarn is stored on shelves!], to see if there's any sign of mould in there still.) I'm hoping I'm better by Thursday for the damp inspector (though I may not go to knit group)... and I have a tooth extraction supposedly booked for Saturday.

I'm OK otherwise, but knackered from all the walking, and the lack of naps (I find it hard to nap on the sofa, I slide down and am at risk of my bum falling onto the floor, which would be disastrous). I've done about as much as I can with all the Stuph, without anywhere to put things, so all I can do is sit and watch Wimbledon & knit a bit.

On Sunday afternoon/evening I got a notification from Apple's 'App Store' that there were updates available for the laptop. This happens fairly frequently, and often it's fairly minor stuff, like updates for Pages/Numbers/Keynote and so on. This was a minor-ish update for Safari, and a general update to MacOS to 12.6.7. I decided I'd got time to run those (the MacOS often takes a bit longer than others, and requires a restart usually), so I clicked 'update'. The Safari one went OK; and then the MacOS started, and then stopped and grumpily told me I hadn't got enough space on my hard drive! So I moved some stuff around, deleted a few old things from Downloads, etc., and tried again. This time it crashed completely. I had a couple of goes at restarting it, but it would only boot into Recovery mode, where there were no helpful options - everything I tried that I knew was safe ended up with 'you need to reinstall MacOS Monterey!' followed immediately by 'you don't have enough space to do this!'.

( Aarrgghh! )

At some point I'll need to do a data deduplication of the stuff I moved off the HD and onto a USB, and then consider putting it back onto the HD. And I think my backup external drive is getting full, so I'm going to plug in the previous one, clear everything off that (it's several years old now!), and start using that again.

And in also good news, I managed to get a haircut last Friday; a friend has offered to help me re-colour it on Thursday at her place (my shoulders make it somewhat difficult to manage on my own); I've just managed to book a chiropody appointment for next month; and I've finally (almost a week late... I've had no post for at least a week!) got the frame for the Hulk cross-stitch.

Have *you* checked your email address for DW is confirmed? If not, why not? Do it now! Here's why: https://synecdochic.dreamwidth.org/794973.html

I've spent almost all of the last 3 weeks sitting on a sofa in Bangor, North Wales, being comfortably over-fed by my hostess, lexin, and discussing this that and the other, and watching Gilbert & Sullivan shows and various films (mostly thrillers). And knitting, and bitching about the rain and the wind, and alarming the cat (and amusing us) by playing the https://bongo.cat/ meows at her. Also (amusing)feeding said spherical cat scraps of chicken and ham from our festive plates, and last week (alarming) by (HERESY!) *washing* her pink fluffy cushion-bed, and making it smell B-A-D. Apparently.

We went out three times to have Friday brunch at the Clio Lounge, which is rather nice (if you're ever in Bangor, it's opposite Boots, on the High Street). On 23rd December and 6th January there was the Friday street market to enjoy - it's not enormous, but there was a chap with some extremely nice colourful rugs, and two people selling jewellery; we both dithered over the slate jewellery, but did not eventually buy any, but both of us succumbed to the woman selling silver jewellery. Ruth bought a nice twisted silver ring on the 6th, and I got 2 pairs of chain-link earrings, the first in dark blue with black, which goes very nicely with Jumper No.1 in the Malabrigo purple & blue, and the second in slightly larger links in brown and gold. We had lunch there yesterday (10th), as she had a dentist's appointment at midday, and I had a train to catch at 15:15.

We also bought a lot of chocolates and biscuits from M&S, and ate a lot of them. I've rescued home all the coffee creams from the boxes of M&S mixed chocolates (better value than Quality Street, we reckon). And we took a lot of taxis, because of the aforementioned rain and wind. I did manage to nip out a couple of times to the little Co-op shop attached to the petrol station over the road, for milk and other such things, and for my sandwich for the trip home (which I actually ate as tea yesterday, I couldn't face getting up again and going out for food).

I think I overdid things today - I had two things to post at the PO (after fighting my printer to print a label for one of them), and in among the small mountain of post waiting for me when I got in was a letter from the council offering me a £100 top-up towards cost-of-living, which was to be redeemed at a post office on production of the letter plus ID. After doing that I took the passport (ID) home, and picked up my handbag to go & do a bit of other shopping (yes, I could have done it with the £100, but I'd got nowhere to put the change!). Picked up most of my prescription repeat, had a little unsuccessful look for small nail-files (preferably the glass ones), and got two ready meals, milk, and other bits & pieces in Iceland. I was so knackered that after sitting down with a coffee, I had to go for an hour's nap. Then I woke up, nuked one of the meals ('MyProtein' mac'n' cheese with pulled pork, not bad) and ate it, followed with a cinnamon bun, cut my fingernails, & thought I'd better type this lot up before I forgot it, and before I start knitting again.

So, OK, last December I had the major upheaval where the council came and put new windows in. They did it over 2 days - bedroom & kitchen one day, bathroom & living room the next. There have been several minor annoyances, some of which have been resolved, some not: they SCREWED the curtain wires for the net curtains to the frame in the bedroom and kitchen, meaning there was no way to get them down to wash/change them. They bashed the living-room windows (french doors and a small window to one side) out with such force that they damaged the net-curtain rod fixings there, and when I challenged them they had to go and rummage in their skip; they only found two, which they then proceeded to install the wrong way round. And I have to stand on a stool to reach the kitchen window handles. And the side piece on the little living-room windowsill inside was left with rough edges, not properly fixed down either, so the corner is now covered with white fabric tape and white 'gaffer' tape.

( Grrr, aarrgghh. )

I had a strong sneezing fit last night, before bed, and another one in the middle of the night. That blocked my nose, and gave me sinus pain (you can tell it's sinus when the whole of your top jaw aches...). So this morning, after Not Very Much Sleep, I got blearily up and took an LFT. Which went positive almost as soon as the solution passed the T line! So I put my knickers on & got a glass of squash, which was all I could face - I'd had a decongestant at about 6am, and was awake enough after doing the test to have 2 paracetamol. Then I went back to lie on the bed, and got about an hour's nap.

I've gone from hot & sweaty to cold & sweaty and back again. I've managed to eat 'breakfast' of 2 nuked onion bhajis, my propolis, and a mug of coffee with coffeemate in, because otherwise the milk I've got won't last till the weekend when I may possibly test negative (fingers crossed!), or at least be ready for an online food order. I went to Waitrose on Friday after my podiatry appointment, and the fridge is rammed. So I'm not short of food, but I only picked up a 1L bottle of Cravendale, thinking I'd be ready to go out Wednesday or Thursday to Aldi for two 2L bottles...

And the postie has just come, bringing me my bowel-cancer screening test kit. I do sort of wonder if I should phone the helpline to see if it's OK to do it while testing positive for Covid...
ETA: I've just phoned and they said it was fine to do it now, but the kits do last up to a year, so it's OK to wait till I'm C-19 negative. I did also point out that I'd have problems getting it posted till I'm negative anyway...

Positive again this morning. Booooooooo!!!

EDIT, 31 May: And this morning ... negative. Definitely Schrödinger's Covid!

My luck has finally run out.


Probably picked this up last weekend when shopping at the local market, where very few people were masked, or in the Co-op, which is rather small and cramped and where also there were few masks. Also possibly, though I hope not, last Thursday on the way to/from - or at - knit group.

May 20: Today's test showed the veryveryVERY faintest of T-lines after an extra 10 minutes (after the 15 minutes recommended), when viewed in a good light. So I don't know if I've got Schrödinger's Covid or not... Anyway, I'm feeling no worse, in fact the cough is easing a little (this may be the prednisolone I'm taking for the asthma exacerbation kicking in!), and I've got a food delivery booked for tomorrow.

Haven't posted for a month, bah. I had to have an extra 5 days of prednisolone to finally get rid of the cough, but have been breathing well since then.

Some time ago someone (I forget who) posted somewhere (FB? Discord/#filkhaven?) about a recipe for a Giant Cinnamon Roll Scone. Marilisa made one. It looked yummy, and I rather like cinnamon. So two weeks ago, having finally got hold of soft brown sugar in my weekly shopping, I took the plunge. The first version was slightly collapsible, but utterly delicious. This past weekend, I thought I'd take my mind off what's happening on Ravelry (DO NOT look if you haven't logged in there for a while and have any tendency towards migraine or epilepsy or other visual disturbances from screen usage!!!!) (basically, new 'look' for the site is causing all sorts of problems for a lot of people, the management are glossing over it and not making substantial changes, so people are leaving ... not quite in droves, but there are more than a few designers looking for other places to put their patterns; and I am, like quite a few others, looking at methods of downloading my library of patterns and details of the projects I've made...).

SO ANYWAY, I made another Giant Cinnamon Roll Scone. This one has come out somewhat more scone-like, a bit drier than the first one, but is still delicious. I've run out of icing sugar (*sadface*), so had to use soft brown sugar and caster sugar for the 'glaze', and of course I made too much, but hey! that means I can add a bit extra at times. It looked rather like this, before adding the glaze:



If anyone feels desirous, after seeing that, of making their own, the recipe is from the New York Times, and may be found at https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1020986-giant-cinnamon-roll-scone .

(I did also make another two loaves of sourdough at the start of the month, and will probably have to do so again in another week. But they're not as photogenic.)

I am on lockdown and semi-'shielding' - I'm on 'high-dose' inhaled steroids, which technically makes me a 'vulnerable person', but not apparently an 'extremely' vulnerable one. So I don't apparently get any official government help. There's a local mutual aid group which I may need to apply to for stuff, but for the time being I haven't been out of the house since last Wednesday, when I ventured out for emergency milk supply, except for a bit of exercise in the front yard, and to put the bins out etc, and into the back garden and to refill the bird feeders. I'm doing 'push-ups' against the sink, and lunges in the kitchen, semi-squats almost anywhere when I remember. A very kind friend who lives about a mile away has offered to put my shopping list onto her usual online food order, and brought it round last week on her bike! Well, that's her daily exercise, as well as helping a vulnerable person... I'm gradually eating up stuff from the freezer, with fresh veg brought by my 'personal shopper'!

I haven't got as much knitting done as I'd have thought, because actually I do get an awful lot done on the bus, and I haven't been on a bus since [looks at calendar] March 9th. Three weeks...

I woke at something silly like half past 6 this morning, lay awake for a bit and then said 'sod it' and turned over for more sleep, during which time I dreamt that I was on a trip to (I think?) America with a group of people in their late teens/early 20s - and I was about that age too; I was a bit sweet on one of the boys, and I think he liked me back. And the whole group went on a visit to a huge open air cinema, with raked seats, but I couldn't buy any popcorn or snacks because I hadn't changed any money and hadn't got my debit card with me; and I couldn't go and sit with the nice boy because then everyone would *gasp* KNOW we were sweet on each other, which would never do. So I was wandering up and down this cinema place trying to find somewhere to sit, when I woke up.

On January 7th, the lightbulb nearest the table in the living room (the other one is over the sofa) ( quietly died. )

So now I theoretically have light again. For a while, maybe.

( Dental Woes )

I WANT MY TEETH, MY TIME, MY PHONE BILL AND MY SANITY BACK. And some more sleep would be good, too.