And now, the pictures work again

The view as I trotted across the bridge over the Thames on my way back from the gourmet ready meal shop one evening. That was last week. This week was just howling gales and downpours so I didn't see any skies like that one.

Up in Lincoln last weekend, Mum was dogsitting for a friend who's gone on holiday for a fortnight. This is the daft thing she was dogsitting:

It kept demanding to be cuddled (I didn't oblige. I told it I preferred cats) and I had to take it for a couple of walks (all the time telling it I prefer cats). It also unravelled a ball of wool. I was not impressed (even though a cat would probably have done the same thing). Anyway, I've decided dogs are far too much like hard work, and much prefer cats. It did have moments of looking quite cute though.

I took it for a walk through the Arboretum:

and on up to the Cathedral.
The dog didn't really seem to appreciate all these places. Maybe it was fed up with being told how cats are altogether better?

I made it to a Knit Lincs meeting for the first time since moving south. It was good to catch up with everyone, including Nic and Kathleen (who is new to the group & has some fab pics on her blog so go & have a look.)

Meanwhile, back over in Newark the daffodils I planted in the Autumn were putting in an appearance. I planted them the day before I went down south for my job interview, so there's probably something delightfully symbolic about them springing into life now. Or something. It's also quite fun only seeing the garden once a month because the differences each time are so dramatic.


It will also be interesting to keep up with the weeding soon when I'm only there once a month! Hopefully Mum will move into the house before too much longer so I won't have to go there quite so often. But she has to sell her house first... Anyone want to buy a four bed house in Lincoln with a granny flat on the side?!

I'm just back from a weekend visiting cats (and humans) in Bristol, but more of that in a future post, otherwise this one will be enormous. No knitting photos this time, mainly due to my being out every evening last week so no knitting happened (quite apart from the knitting being in Lincoln for most of the week too. Thankfully Les (who'd come down from Lincoln for a meeting) dropped it in to work for me on Wednesday). I'm loving the new Knitty (and especially having time to look at it properly). There were several patterns which will be perfect for me for work, as I'm meant to look smart these days. Anyone who's met me will know that I generally wander around in Doc Martens, jeans and jumpers, and my previous job meant wearing them in abundance as it was so cold. But we have heating at The Job That is 3.5 Months Old, and an expectation that we will look smart so I need to do something about that! Fortunately I started looking at the Knitty patterns a couple of days after they were published, by which point they'd appeared on Ravelry, so I could add some to my queue straight away!

I went out on a soup run for the homeless in Slough on Monday night. It was a bit of a discomfiting experience. We were right opposite one of the biggest Tesco stores in the country (so I've been informed, I can believe it, it took me ages to find a pint of milk in there a few weeks ago) which felt downright weird - on one side of the road were loads of people pushing laden trolleys around filled with food, on the other side were people with no food or shelter. As with the soup run I did years ago in London, there was an intriguing mixture of people - some with health problems (mental and/or physical), drug and alcohol problems, several ex-service personnel and some who you just couldn't work out how they'd ended up there. I've decided to keep on going to it, even though I found it difficult. There was a good atmosphere underneath the slight weirdness.

Think that's all for now.