Mum has been painting the front door on the inside.  She had hoped that two coats would be sufficient but it looks like it will need three.  As it is some strange kind of special paint, a new pot will need to be ordered before it can be completed.  Aunty Biscuit meanwhile has sliced her finger open so can’t do any knitting due to plaster placement which is a little disappointing as she is nearly ready to start some shaping.  We have a woodpecker dangling from the multifood feeder.  A quick check reveals it is a male greater spotted one.  As he has been on there a while we did wonder if he was a stuffed or knitted one but was proved to be alive when he moved from the peanuts to the fat balls. Harrier and I seem to have gone very rapidly from admiring autumn colour on our walks to admiring the silhouettes of the bare trees against the dusk, some of them with the moon filtering through the branches.  I presume this is one of the consequences of the ...

Some of the pinecones have now been waxed.  Listed is a step by step guide to waxing pine cones Aunty Biscuit style so perhaps not an ideal method but if your human gives it a go make sure they take care as hot things can burn.  Dogs need to keep well out of the way.

Ingredients

Cups of tea (you can substitute with cups of coffee if desired),1 box of commercial cherry bakewells – for a seasonal twist you could use mince pies,. 1 dry clean empty chicken soup tin (a baked bean or dog food tin is also suitable) Dried pinecones, Cotton string or leftover candle wick. broken bits of candle and/or leftover wax from a candlemaking kit, a pan with water in it.

Method.  

Eat the cherry bakewells washing them down with the tea and retain the little foil

The sketchbook and paper have now been investigated and it would appear that we are in the preliminary stages of a horse type motif design.  As an interim “knitting in front of the TV with not too much effort”, an Aran tunic has been commenced.  The beauty of this it seems is that there is no rib to do on the back and front.  If she was capable of such things, I am sure Aunty Biscuit would be doing handstands to celebrate, although an upside down Aunty Biscuit is not something the rest of us want to even contemplate. Let alone have to endure.  

This evenings walk was conducted in the dark which I found slightly confusing until I remembered that Mum had moved all the hands on the clocks yesterday.  On of the clocks was a specially made presents for her which has a picture of grey pony on it.  The secret for a picture being suitable for being a clock is eye placement as allegedly you don’t want it too close to the centre.  Good to know I suppose. 

Last year we helped Aunty Biscuit collect pinecones which I thought was just because she likes them or she had plans to turn some of them into Christmas decorations.  They are now opened out and dried out but it turns out that some of them were earmarked as kindling for the fire.  Apparently, some people tie a bit of string to them and coat both elements in wax then they can use it as a firelighter as well.  It remains to be seen whether she gives this a go, although she does have a candle making kit to try somewhere so it is possible that when she finally does that there may be some leftovers that she could use.  For a small fee (a sprat or piece of doggie sausage each} Harrier and I are prepared to fish one of our dogfood tins out of the recycling to be used as the inside of a double boiler should it be needed.

A sketchbook has been in evidence the past couple of days which now has now been joined by what appears to be the strange graph paper that Mum and Aunty Biscuit have which is rectangles instead of squares.  This paper is used for knitting patterns as a stitch height is four fifths of its width hence the ordinary squared paper would produce a misshapen pattern.  Harrier says you can also get logarithmic graph paper which is even stranger and would produce a totally weird

We now have a legwarmer although it needs stitching up.  The other one is progressing well.  We have decided that in the event that should Mum ask what it is we are going to tell her either that it is part of a blanket for Prudence (plausible) or that it is a charity jumper for a rescue hen (slightly less plausible but the sort of thing that can happen).  Mum now has two completed hens with beaks in the correct place on her cross stitch.