Seasonal Weather

Hello! Everyone ok? I'm enjoying the peace of a Sunday night with the extra good feeling that comes from not having to get up for work and school tomorrow. I love the February half term, and this one was welcome. I don't know about you, but I felt like it was the longest five week term ever. John is home this week and we have a few day trips planned but nothing major. No travelling, no decorating, just lots of taking it easy. Ok, obviously I have a list of jobs to do this week, the kinds of things I only get time to do in the holidays: spring cleaning, sorting out all the children's toys under their beds, admin. I made a start today and repotted all my house plants. I reckon I have a fifty/fifty success rate with my house plants; for every pilea peperomioides I propagate, I kill a succulent. Ziggy likes to chew the odd plant too, so I can't keep any on the floor at the moment and I fear that my poor Mother in Law's Tongue plant will never be the same again. I think I've got room for a few more though - I'd very much like a String of Hearts/Rosary Vine and a Calathea. 

It's been so cold this last week. We've had sleet, hail, frost and wind that makes your cheeks sting. I like it when the weather behaves in a seasonally appropriate way, and would always take cold and dry over wet and mild weather, but my skin is protesting. My hands and lips are chapped, and the skin around my eyes gets red and itchy when it's very cold. This never used to happen, and I can only think it's one of the delightful things that must happen as one gets older. Fantastic.

We walk and walk - the beach or the shore at the weekend, or I go down to the woods in the week before I go to work. It's good for me and tires out Ziggy who, if he's feeling energetic or mischievous and doesn't fancy the look of his various bones and toys, will chew shoes and furniture. He's pretty handsome though, isn't he? He's also a joy to walk, especially when we go somewhere where he can run off the lead. 

I've been cooking a lot. The cold weather makes me want to eat cake, so I make blondies and flapjacks and banana bread, and then broccoli and quinoa salad to make myself feel better. The cold also makes me want to crochet and knit, so I've been doing lots of both. The crochet socks are finished now, although I did have a soul crushing moment earlier in the week when I realised that I had somehow managed to crochet an entire second sock on a different sized hook, and didn't realise until they were almost done and I tried them on, and so I feel like I crocheted that sock about seven times, when in fact it was only twice. I am knitting away at my huge jumper when I can, and surprising myself by how much I'm enjoying the rows of garter stitch.

It was my Grandpa's funeral at the start of the week. I'd been dreading it, but is was about as lovely as a funeral could be. So many people came that they had to stand at the back of the church and the tributes and eulogies were beautiful. His wish was to be buried in a natural burial site and today my family and I all met down there to scatter wild flower seeds before going for a walk together. It's a nice spot, near the shore, and somewhere we walk a lot anyway, so it will be nice to pop back over the spring and summer and see if any flowers have grown and say hello. 

We're off to Brighton tomorrow and, while John tells me there won't be time for any shopping, I'm just going to quickly google "yarn shops in Brighton", just to have a look. It can't hurt, surely.