Easily distracted

I begin most days with good intentions. Need I go on? 🫢

I can’t count the number of times I have started to gather photos for an update here. But then something happens…catches my eye…piques my curiosity…or needs to be done right now this minute. Most likely, I look out of the window and see some beautiful light that needs to be captured and my camera is elsewhere.

Then, whilst I’m looking for my camera, my phone pings and there’s a photograph of Arthur, out for a walk in the park with his Daddy. What better distraction can there be than news from our sweet Grandson?

Occasionally, my Hero will call me to come and look out of the kitchen window, because we have a visitor in the garden. Hmmm. Looking all too comfortable I’d say, though at least he’s not eating my rose bushes.

One day last week, I heard him call from our downstairs laundry room, having discovered a mysterious damp patch on the ceiling there. Where could that water have come from? The kitchen is above here, with a concrete floor in between and no water sources anywhere near there. A mystery then.

The mystery was solved some days later when he took a look outside and discovered the extraction outlet for the laundry had not been sealed waterproof and the torrential rain we’d had last week had somehow seeped in and along the pipework. Sealed and sorted now, hooray!

That weather made for some spectacular rainbows, the best of which I saw but didn’t photograph, of course, because I was trying very hard to focus.

The craft judging course I’ve been teaching was nearing an end and there was an assessment to prepare for. Such days are stressful for my students and I try to build in some comfort. One of the classes in the “village show” then, is for a Teddy Bears’ Picnic and each bear needs a name tag and a quick spruce up.

In addition to the bears, I needed to prepare an assortment of other crafts to be judged. I never set up traps to trip my students up, but try to find interesting and different things for them to judge that will allow them to show off their skills. Not only that, but in these days of online training, it’s a rare chance for them to see and handle some of the more obscure examples I have in my collection, like the “lace” bookmark that’s actually machine embroidery worked on soluble fabric. What are the tell tale signs that give away the truth, that it’s not bobbin lace at all? With a lacemaker in the group this was a great opportunity to find out! But as I loaded my car with boxes and bags for the journey, I said - as I always do - that in my next life I’m coming back as a maths teacher…

Whilst we’re putting everything away at the end of the day, as one of the talented women I’ve been working begins to fold a silk square, she remembers a clever trick to create a rose from a couple of knots and we try very hard to remember how it’s done.

Needless to say that, in spite of taking photos and a short video, I have forgotten, so I go online to see if it’s there on YouTube (it is) and meanwhile spot a clever idea for decorated chocolate brownies.

There’s a call from the kitchen. He’s back….

So, the big question is, what brought me to my desk and prompted me to finally post something here? The first snow of the season! Only “a dusting” though it was so wet, that description hardly applies. But it’s certainly turned chilly and the leaves, which have been spectacular this Autumn, have finally all fallen from the trees.

Late November already!