Made it!

There were times last week when this afternoon seemed a long way away on the horizon.  This afternoon being Monday, the first empty space in my diary since the last time I posted anything here.

Oh my.

It was a week of lists of things to do, of prioritising things which could wait a while in order to get those things which simply had to be done completed in time.  (I don’t normally write like that by the way, but was feeling in need of a little silliness at the end of a long day)

I wasn’t the only one to be feeling the pinch either.  In an open plan office, it’s quite hard to focus at times!

But we made it.  With a couple of breathing spaces to keep me on track, thankfully.  Lunch with a good friend in an empty pub and lunch with my hero in another empty pub on the following day meant that there was no need to shop and cook. 

There was the other fun distraction of my WI meeting too – our speakers, Sue and Mark from Kelsmor Dairy arrived in their ice cream van and having told us all about their farm, their herd of Guernsey cattle and the business of making award winning ice cream we formed an orderly queue and gave it a try – one flavour at a time!

This was the view from my workroom on Friday, where we spent most of the day in the company of almost 200 colleagues and my working space was aptly described by a colleague as “the bottom end”.

No comment!

The last of my show bookings for this year on Saturday and a fun finish with this unusual class.  Can you work out what they are?

I thought this little chap was the cutest animal made from vegetables I’ve seen this year.  First prize, of course!

And there we were, almost into the open again.  A comforting lunch of Rose Prince’s Poached Chicken with Leeks and Tarragon will stretch for a couple of meals and I left Cirencester this morning having ticked off the last entry in my work calendar for a few days and feeling good about that.

I think it’s time for some fun, don’t you? 

Except…

There is the European Ironing Mountain to keep me quiet.

So much to learn

I’m making progress with my LSNED project though some days offer more opportunities for learning than others. 

Take yesterday, for example, when I enjoyed a lovely day at Moreton Show.  Once I’d completed my work judging the crafts in the Home and Garden marquee, I set out for my favourite corner: the Livestock arena.

I spent a happy hour or more, learning a little about judging cattle from the grey haired gentleman in the photograph, who was giving an excellent commentary as the judge did his work.  Don’t worry, though, I have no intention of broadening my specialism!

Taking photographs to record the entries I’d judged earlier proved that I still have a bit to learn when it comes to composing an image, too!

Walking around the show is a great opportunity to admire the skills of others, even if I’m not really inspired to grow enormous vegetables.

All of this is a strong contrast to what I learned on Friday, though, when I realised that there is a difference between a pivoting table

and a pivot table

Hmmm. 

I have so much to learn.

Contains very mild scary scenes and slapstick violence

“Just like at home, then”, according to someone who shall remain anonymous…

Our small friends took us to the cinema this morning, to see Despicable Me 2 which we all loved.  We were the only ones in the place for a while, but were joined by another couple of families shortly before the trailers began.  Once again, the Minions stole the show and whilst we giggled along with the children, my hero and I marvelled at the fantastic rendering of the fabrics in particular – Mr Gru’s jacket was exquisitely done, especially after the rainstorm.

We spent the rest of the day taming some Scoubidous into bracelets, hoping to find some longer lengths to buy whilst we were out but discovering that, around here at least, it’s last year’s craze.  Well, here’s hoping they start it going again amongst their friends soon, because we need more and just can’t wait for the Amazon package to arrive!

Can it really be September?

We had such a lovely day yesterday with friends from Arizona, with whom we spent a fun Independence Day last year that the change in the month passed me by.  We’re enjoying the fine weather, don’t have a new term to worry about (or look forward to) and though I’m gently easing back into work mode, really, the summer goes on.

There’s an abundance of fruit in the garden and thanks to Sue and Ivars’ restraint during Sunday lunch yesterday, there’s an abundance of puddings in the fridge too.

Yes, of course one of them is a plum crumble.  Good things happen in September!

Last week, prompted by an email from Shimelle about her annual “Learn Something New Every Day” project, I began to think how I might approach it this year.  I try to do something different each year – last year I had fun getting my hands dirty, in 2011 I made an envelope book and enjoyed playing with both glue stick and my computer, because previously, I’d found that though it was fun to use my computer to do these things, I missed playing around with glue and scissors.

How shall I do it this year, then?

I decided to use September to explore something I’ve seen but not really tried myself: Instagram.  I’ve signed up and logged in on my phone and also downloaded Rhonna Farrer’s app with the intention of learning to edit photos using my phone this year.  Yesterday, the first of the month, I took a photograph of the lovely sunset from our window using my phone.  I then tried my first edit by adding some text to it, saving in Day One.

I haven’t yet decided if I’ll eventually print them all out or leave them in a digital album, but I aim to learn something new each day by exploring the hundreds of options available in the Rhonna Designs app.  I haven’t decided yet if I want to post each one to Instagram, either, since this might be as public as I want to go for now.  We’ll see.

One thing is for sure.  I have a lot to learn!