Lifted lead, two tiles and a zig-zag fence

I hope you’ve not suffered too much damage from the recent storms, here Storm Eunice - with a red weather warning - was here on Friday, and she definitely left her mark. My home office is in the top of our house and I could definitely hear the wind. My working day involved several more looks out the window to see what was going on, at both the front and back of the house. MOH’s home office is on the floor below and he had a birds eye view of our neighbour’s fence, which was definitely blowing in the wind and looking more zig-zagged than straight.

Just down the road the O2 was also suffering and I’m sure you’ve seen its news that part of the roof blew off. For us, it was thankfully less dramatic, though there’s some more repair work needed so I’m hoping as I’m writing this that Storm Franklin isn’t as bad.

Next door’s zig-zag fence

It doesn’t look any better at ground level. They’re not having a good time of it at the moment as they’ve also had a bathroom leak into the basement flat.

There’s lots of twigs down in our garden, and while we haven’t checked all of the garden carefully it’s easy to see from the house that one of our sycamore has a broken branch. It’s still up there, and lodged in the other branches, and I’m hoping it manages to stay there. Ironically these trees were supposed to have been pollarded, but the tree man has done missing. We’ve three trees that need work and our neighbours have two further trees, and so it’s not a small project between us, so it’s strange for there to be lots of interest and then nothing. Neither our neighbour our MOH can make contact, so it’s probably time to start looking for someone else.

A broken branch, lodged among other branches - let’s hope it stays there!

Our roof at the front of the house wasn’t quite so fortunate. We saw on Saturday morning that the lead had lifted and two tiles had gone. We weren’t sure where, but were grateful that it wasn’t onto any of the parked cars in the drive. We hoped that they had simply dropped down into the gutter which goes around the house - and we were half right, that’s exactly where one of the tiles had gone. MOH was able to reach that earlier today by leaning out of the window.

The other tile was found by our neighbour, on the roof. And bless him, he was up on our roof on Saturday afternoon (when the weather still wasn’t that great) retrieving it for us. Before covid he added a roof terrace giving his flat some outside space - as part of that it’s relatively easy for him to get onto his roof, and therefore our roof. He’s always very generously said that if we needed to access our roof then we are welcome to do this via his roof space.

What he also did while he was retrieving the tile was push the lead back down, and so giving our roof more protection from the rain we’ve had since then, and more which is forecast too. What a superstar neighbour - we’re incredibly grateful for this interim fix.

You really can’t beat good neighbours can you?

A waiting game

I’m not known for my patience, but here I’ve excelled myself. I’ve long been a fan of the blue rimmed white enamelware, and over the years I’ve acquired pie dishes, pie plates and tumblers, and it’s always something I look out for in markets and charity shops. Last summer I branched out colour-wise when I fell in love with the mustard yellow jug.

In the first lockdown of 2020 the ads in my browser started to show enamelware and eventually I cracked and headed over to see what was there. I quickly became very taken with Falcon’s Enamelware 5 piece bake set - the added attraction was being able to use on our induction hob, a bonus over our current pans. But it was out of stock. And it stayed out of stock for quite a while.

Briefly it came back into stock and I thought to myself - great, I’ll sort that out.

And then by the time I did people had got there before I had. So I was waiting again.

Occasionally I’d find myself on the site, but there was still no stock. I was almost resigned to the fact that it wasn’t meant to be.

Then, guess what? A week or so ago when I checked again, there was stock. There it was the blue rimmed white enamel bakeware set. I wasn’t going to miss out this time, so it was in my basket and checked out before you could say, well pie dish.

And then it was here, and just as beautiful as I thought it would be. I also bought a small tray and took full advantage of the first purchase discount.

MOH predictably asked if with new tins coming in, this meant some old tins would be going out. And it may, but not just yet. We’ve already made good use of the small tray and a couple of the tins, I think even MOH is surprised.

And I now have a new Falcon Enamelware item to stalk. The small tray is so useful, and just the right size to hold my olive oil bottle which sits behind the hob, but as our worktop is black granite the white one isn’t quite right, so now I’m stalking the black version - which yes, you’ve guessed it, is out of stock.

It seems my life isn’t complete without playing the waiting game with Falcon Enamelware. Luckily, I’m ready to play the long game - let’s hope it doesn’t test my patience (or lack of) too much.

Getting the hang of winding skeins

My Christmas present from MOH was a wooden wool winder and swift which took longer than predicted to arrive, which stressed him out more than it should have, and more than I wanted it to too. We knew it was hit and miss as to whether it would arrive in time for Christmas (it didn’t - but it was on its way), but MOH was keen for me to have a present to open, and his backup present cut it fine too.

When it arrived it was beautiful, and needed assembling. With no instructions to follow I got most of the way there, and between us we got there. The wool winder is the darker wood and the swift - for holding skeins - is in the lighter wood.

Spoiler: I haven’t masted the swift just yet.

Once again this year I’d bought the Yarn Advent calendar by Vicki Brown Designs, and I was hanging on to this for it to be my first ‘wound’ wool. And here’s day 1 wound.

With life getting in the way until this weekend, the yarn and the winder had been left to one side. But after a slower weekend and with MOH out on a long cycle, I picked it up again - and cracked winding the skeins. The tension on this wound peach wool is much more tightly wound than I’d previously managed. This was achieved simply by increasing the tension (or holding!) the wool as it went through the guide.

And then there was no stopping me - sort of. The swift is going to take a little bit more time and as you know I’m inpatient. But I’m making progress with over half of the Yarn Advent wound - I’ve even rewound some of them so they’re more tightly tensioned. Once they’re wound I know I’ll be keen to get started on my next project - I should finish my last project first though, but the new project call is strong - and making up projects is not my favourite task.

Each skein is tied in three places with a small length of the same yarn, and I can’t quite bring myself to throw this away. I’ve been knotting these together and winding these onto a wooden cotton reel along with smallish remnants from other projects. I’ve no real plan for how I’ll use these but at some point - and I think that won’t be far off - I think I’ll be adding these to my hook.

I’m pretty sure I know how I want to use the Yarn Advent skeins, and before I share more on that I’ll show you the outcome of the previous years’ project.