This was a weird week of seemingly not a lot happening, but at the same time I feel like I’ve started this thing so I should probably carry it on…

Monday: Posted off the custom Etsy order. I had a week of stress waiting for the yarn and a weekend of furious knitting to get it completed (early, by the way, I had given myself two weeks but I prefer to be like Scotty from Star Trek and exceed expectations) and it was good to get it sent. I also did a little chauffeuring and dog-sitting so I probably got more done than I realised.

Tuesday: More dog-sitting. I don’t really think of her as a furry grandchild but I suspect puppy daycare is just as expensive as child daycare so I do feel like I’m doing a good deed…I also get to play with an adorable Labrador for hours on end so who is really getting the best end of this deal?

Knitted many, many, many pumpkins…

Wednesday: MORE dog-sitting, during which I also managed to listen to a talk by Ada Palmer on The Nature of Intellectual Transformation, which was really good (waves thanks to You Know Who You Are). I’m not a huge history buff, I prefer to look to the future, but at the same time I am very aware that we do NEED people who are history buffs to help us learn the lessons we should. It seems that Ada Palmer is just such a person. She managed to make the topic highly relevant and interesting and I am seriously tempted by the online course she will be teaching, although I will probably talk myself out of it because it is history after all and I like to know I’m going to enjoy what I’m learning. She also writes books, so they are all On The List now.

Thursday: Managed another run on the treadmill (the flip down display cover is still working well) and listed some more things on Etsy. I’m working on something that is highly fiddly but enormously satisfying. So much so that I am thinking of keeping them for myself, which would really defeat the purpose of having an Etsy shop in the first place. I’m not in this for the money, if I were I wouldn’t have sold anything yet because everything would have been listed at 10 times the price to cover my time and effort, but this very detailed thing I’m in the middle of is reminding me how much I enjoy the process of crafting.

Not 100% sure I’ve ever actually been in a ‘flow’ state, but the rest of the world does drift very far into the background when I’ve got a tiny paintbrush in my hands.

Friday: Book for this week: The Bookshop Of Yesterdays – Amy Meyerson This is a perfectly well written book but I figured out the twist really early and I lost interest in the many, many literary references and scavenger hunt plot devices after that. I think this book probably pales for me due to comparisons to the other books I have read lately, so I’m going to avoid the normal best sellers and just stick to the weird ones from now on.

Today was also a ‘best laid plans of mice and men’ sort of day. Our decision to travel this evening was thwarted by last minute obligations, but this weekend is followed by a public holiday, which is also the last one of the school summer holidays, so I suspect driving anywhere is going to be a bit annoying, no matter when it eventually happens.

Saturday: I took a slow and carefree approach to this morning, in the hopes that it would rub off on this afternoon, which was when we set off for our 160 mile journey along three of Britain’s busiest motorways. It didn’t turn out too badly actually (everyone else managed to set off yesterday perhaps?) and we arrived in normal fashion, slightly too hot, in need of coffee and desperately seeking a loo.

The 160 miles are in aid of DIY and decorating a flat to get it ready for sale. It has been slow going so far, because of the miles and normal, everyday obligations, but a ridiculous 30th of Sept challenge has been cast down like a gauntlet, so I’d expect plenty of tales of hammered thumbs and paint sploshed hair in the next 4 weeks if I were you.

Sunday: Paint was sploshed, then re-sploshed because I wasn’t keen on the depth of colour (yellow – either too dull or not pale enough, but I know how to mix paint so it’s been fixed now) and other, stranger, stuff happened beyond my sight in other rooms (a ceiling of artex has been patched which, before this project, I didn’t even know was possible).

I end the week tired, paint covered but happy to have spotted some magpies playing Tig with a fox (apologises for the awful photo quality!)