Shortest Day

...and it's been a gloomy one outside! Still, at least the nights don't get any longer from a theoretical point of view and we have been fortunate here in my part of the world that the good weather started in April and seemed to go on until mid-November. My crocuses are poking up through the rain-hammered soil and if/when the grass dries out a bit I will go and out finish trimming all the scrappy bits of foliage from my lupins and snapdragons. I might take some cuttings too and I ought to mulch or lift my blue salvias as the seeds were really expensive and they aren't terribly hardy!

I didn't have a Midwinter party this year but I did make a gingerbread house:

I made gingerbread chickens and ducks rather than people and Amber added a couple of bunnies so it's remarkably authentic. I would like to tackle another gingerbread creation before the weekend...

I ought to tackle tidying up my study - it's getting quite difficult to get in the room at all now. I do try and tell myself that once spring comes I can put the beehive/frames/nucleus box in the garden (they are quite big things to store) and I need to give Nicky back some books and a big box of Fimo, and the eggboxes should probably live somewhere other than the in-tray on my desk, and the demi-johns could be put somewhere else too I guess :-/ My aunt came round with my parents on Monday and she commented that I needed more storage; I had to admit that I have plenty of storage but I am rubbish at putting stuff away. My commitment to housework is similarly lax - I think I'm missing a gene sequence or two.

The circular scarf that I'm knitting is going ok although I realised I'm all out of kilter with my charts but the layer I'm doing is in black yarn so it's pretty forgiving. Do I work on through with the wrong pattern and pretend it's meant to 'drift' along rather than be in nice blocks or do I stick resolutely to the charts and not mind about the sticky bit in the middle where I have gone wrong? Will the recipient even notice??

Luckily, in the face of such knitting and housework inadequacy, I got our home-ed report which was so glowing and positive and chock full of compliments at my brilliant educational provision I had to sit myself down and bask in the praise for a few minutes. It is soooooo wonderful to get that affirmation from someone whose role is to check that I am doing a good job: it would appear I am :-)