Sunday Miscellany on 03/01/10

Let me start by saying – somewhat belatedly – Happy New Year to you – before I quickly move along to the apologies.

What must you think of me? No Happy New Year greeting for three days?  No posts at all, in fact, for three days! No Guided Tour of my mittens, as promised! No F.O. post on Friday about either the mittens or the year that was 2009??? And, lest I think I’m getting away with it – no list of January’s Gardening jobs for the 1st of the month, as previously promised.

Shocking.

It’s like I was leading you along, posting like that on a daily basis; only to abandon you, leave you in the lurch – high and dry – just when you were getting used to me being around. And what do I have to say for my self? Er… Sorry…???

So here’s what’s going to happen around here.

Yes, I had great fun posting daily since 21st November 09. I did it as a kind of experiment. On the one hand, I was having a mini-competition with myself to see if I could carve out a little bit of blogging-time each evening or to schedule posts I’d set up in advance. My other motivation was much more Machiavellian: around the time I started posting daily, I joined up for the Irish Knitters Group Annual Swap. I thought by dusting down my blog and being more active on it, it might help my upstream pal get a picture of who I am. That didn’t quite work out – mainly because I forgot about my devious and cunning plan as I got more engrossed in posting. Also, I’ve yet to receive my parcel (sniff!) and only then will I be able to tell then whether it was a daft idea in the first place.

Whatever the genesis of my motivation, it has been great to get back into blogging. I’ve enjoyed getting feedback and reading all of your comments. And it’s thanks to you guys that The Ban-zai Bonanza was such great fun. After all, how bad is it if you decide to throw a party and nobody turns up? So, I’m encouraged to keep up posting, just not daily. What I would like, and hope, to do is to continue to post every second day.

So today, being Sunday, it’s Sunday Miscellany. I should explain to my readers who live outside of Ireland that Sunday Miscellany is the name of radio programme that’s on RTE Radio 1, quite early every Sunday morning. The radio programme is a mixutre of short-stories (read by the authors, I think) with pieces of music interspersed. In the same way, my post on a Sunday will be a broad, catch-all type post for anything that doesn’t fit into the rest of the structure – which is as follows:

• Muse on Monday – Muse as in inspiring, Muse as in contemplation, Amuse, Bemuse
• Choose on Tuesday – in which I grapple with some decision – life is a series of decisions
• WIPs on Wednesday – a showcase post for Works In Progress (I realise, pedant that I am, that it should be WsIP but I allow myself poetic licence  from time to time!) 
• Tours on Thursday – in which I post a tutorial or a guided tour of how I made something – possibly even patterns might pop-up here, but I’m not promising anything! I’ve previously also used this post to showcase websites that I’ve found, which I think you’d be interested in.
• F.O. it’s Friday – a showcase post for Finished Objects
• Stash on Sat – a showcase post for existing stash or any S.E.X. (Stash Enhancement Xpeditions) or U.S.A. (Unexpected Stash Acquisition i.e. gifts) Considering I’m putting myself on a strict yarn-diet this year I will – hopefully – only be showing you stash I already own. And there’s enough of that to keep me going throughout the year.
• Sunday Miscellany – miscellaneous (see above)

So – if all goes according to plan – the next time you’ll hear from me is Chooseday (see what I did there?). In the meantime, since this is meant to be a Miscellany – and I’ve got a bit of catching up to do – here’s a few things I should have been doing / saying over the past few days.

Gardening Jobs for January

(coughcoughcough – sorry – just loads of dust built up on the book over the past month – teeheehee!)

• Spread well-rotted manure or compost over empty vegetable beds
• Warm up areas of your seed beds by covering them with sheet of polythene, carpet or cardboard.
• Winter-prune estalished apple and pear trees.
• Devise your sowing and planting plan for the year
• Divide and re-plant old rhubarb crowns
• Sow some seeds indoors – radishes, salad leaves, spinach, onions, peas?

That all sounds achievable. However, add to that the digging-over of raised beds from last month’s list, which we had put on hold due to the cold-snap. Hopefully, the frost will break up the soil sufficiently so as to make the job easier. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it!

Finally – an F.O. – the first of 2010!

I finished the mittens just in time to give them to my sister yesterday, along with the Elsica Hat. She was delighted with the matchy-matchy combo and impressed at receiving a dmaxi original / prototype. I’ve still got two-thirds of a ball left-over, though.

As soon as I completed the first one DH commented that it looked like a famous building in the London Skyline. Can you guess which one? Here’s a hint…

I don't wan' a pickle! Just wanna ride on my Motorcycle...