Done!

All done! Under the stairs, the pan cupboard, the flour cupboard and the tin cupboard all done. Stuff has gone to charity, some is in boxes in the garage, things have been moved around and every cupboard has space in it.  

Even pulled out the cooker and cleaned the sides and floor. I'm knackered, now need to work on winding down so I can sleep tonight. Norfolk tomorrow.

Decluttering



I am done prevaricating about decluttering. Tomorrow it starts. Cupboard under the stairs first - all out and sorted into piles: charity shop, to be stored in the garage (the baking tins I don't want to get rid of, the picnic stuff) and the stuff that needs to go to the tip.

Then the kitchen cupboards, another session to go though the the bedroom cupboards and the office. Tomorrow night the house will be clean and tidy so that when I come back from Norfolk on Saturday I will feel calm and happy when I walk through the door instead of cringing at the mess.

Being tidy makes me less anxious and anxiety is something I am working on beating. That nub of fear that lurks at the pit of my stomach has to go. I am tired of laying in bed, sleepless, as the nub germinates and puts out insidious tendrils that grip my innards and invade my brain, whispering, ' you told them that a hundred times before, they were just being polite, you are a bore,' 'he betrayed you,' 'they are laughing at you you pathetic, old, ugly...,' 'how are you going to sort that tomorrow, you can't do that, you are useless,' and on and on. Or the most dangerous voice of all, the Mummy voice - 'you've done really well, you deserve a treat,' 'there, there, never mind honey, eat this  and you will feel better.'

When I get the compulsion to binge I always follow it. If I defeat it once, it will appear later and I will follow it then. It is always a lot of food eaten quickly and mindlessly. When I finish I feel calm, the anxiety goes. Then later the guilt comes and the voices.  

I am sure that I need to have therapy to deal with this. I tried CBT once but I didn't follow it through, lots of reasons, one being that I didn't trust the therapist the other that keeping the diary of moods and causes that they ask you to do was seriously dragging me down and I don't want to deal with all of that on top of everything else.

I know that I have some seriously fucked up ideas about myself and the way I interact with the world. Recently I have tried to consciously slow down, to relax, to 'go with the flow' rather than jumping in first . Because of this I enjoyed Christmas enormously, time spent with friends and family has been sweet.

The picture is the Farne Isles from the beach between Bamburgh and Seahouses. This beach is my happy place, it is where my soul is free. It represents my aspirations, where I want to be, how I want to feel.  

Tomorrow I start the decluttering, the sweeping of the cobwebs, the clearing out, the creation of space.

Garden

Dear Kym

I don't have a big garden, its the width of my very small semi detatched house that is situated at the edge of farmland outside Leeds in West Yorkshire. The climate is cooler than London, a lot cooler than Cornwall but warmer than Scotland. We get mixed weather in the summer - last year it rained constantly but this year is looking promising.

The garden is sheltered by 8 foot fences over which there are other gardens which have donated quite a lot of the plants which seem to migrate over or through the fences, goodness knows what I've sent back. Next to my next door neighbour there is a disused railway embankment lined with silver birch and sycamore trees.

I love container gardening. These are pots of herbs, various mints, lemon verbena, bay, chives, tarragon, variagated sage. An owl made from a granite pebble.

The garden god. He has periodically to be rescued from the ivy (an ex house plant) that rampages over the back of the garage.

Another owl.

My hanging baskets - the middle one is made (not by me) from pine cones, they haven't got going properly yet. The bird box is not occupied by a nest but a very frazzled bluetit, obviously feeding babies elsewhere uses it to sleep in. He gets cross if I'm in the garden and he wants to get in!

More pots, a chimney pot a friend gave me (it has a hidden pot with flowers in the top) succulents growingin a low wall plus a very active, very established colony of black ants. We ignore each other which so far has worked well.The tall things are lillys that are about a week away from blooming but I can't remember what colour they are. Two more owls, a sandstone carving bought from Ebay and a plastic one that Caitlin couldn't resist one Mother's day.

The other side of the succulents, the sandstone bird bath is really old and weathered, another Ebay purchase, and the blackbirds love it. So does the wood pigeon who sits in it all fluffed up for ages. Somewhere else, buried by geraniums, I have a piece of Welsh slate with a magpie carved on it. I must dig it out.

This is a selection of geraniums and poppies, all self sewn. The poppy seeds came from the garden of a hospital where a dear friend had a long stay. I broadcast the seed from one pod and they have self seeded all over the garden ever since. There is a lot of long grass in it too. I make occasional attempts to weed it out.

Its long been Mum's ambition to have her own supply of rhubarb. Rejecting the specimens for sale at the Garden Centre as not worth the money, she - with all the innocence her 75 year old self could muster, asked an 'old' man in the village, how to look after rhubarb as she was thinking of buying some. He of course said don't buy it I'll give you a patch. My husband David had a massive job to dig it out  its roots go down over a foot and we all got a bit. Mine is looking a bit sad but as I live smack bang in the middle of the Yorkshire 'Rhubarb Triangle' I have hopes that it will rally.

This is a dwarf apple tree, its covered in apples this year but if its true to form, most of them will drop off. Behind me is a damson tree that had loads on last year but hardly any blossom this year. I also have a low growing Quince that is covered in blossom.  You can see the house at the bottom and the back off the garage.

One of four courgette plants. This one has mini courgettes on already. I aim to eat them small this year as hopefully I will have lots. I have put two in the front of the flower bed this year, they should spread and cover all the ground and then spill onto the gravel. I also grow salad leaves in pots and this year have perpetual spinach for the first time. Other pots have rosemary, more taragon, lots of thyme and lots and lots of parsley.

An unknown Clematis and Honeysuckle, both self sown from next door.

The view from my garden with early evening light. The big bushy thing on the patio on the right is a self sown lavender that is growing from between the bricks. Lavender is one of my favourite things. You can see the trees on the disused railway embankment along the top and my neighbour's pergola that has wisteria and several clematis'.

I get an immense amount of pleasure from my garden, pleasure in small things at times when the rest of the world seems to have gone crazy. The lives of the birds on my bird, and squirrels on my bird feeders always entertain.

Happy gardening,

Sue x

Walzing Along

I work from home and one of my guilty secrets is that I keep a knitting project at the side of my desk - for those 5 minute 'let's think this through', 'if I don't stop I will explode', 'bugger it I can't be arsed' moments and (the biggest secret of all) to occupy my fingers and the 50% of my brain not in use when I am on a conference call that I am not chairing.

The criteria is that it is must be tactile, mindless and soothing to do. At the minute it is this which is perfect http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/elizabeth-zimmermanns-green-sweater so its miles and miles of stocking stitch in the round on lovely, 4mm, metal tip, Knit Pro interchangeable needles.

I also have the radio tuned to BBC Radio 3 all day - classical music with no interference from adverts. Today I noticed, during a 'let's think this through' time out that I knit garter stitch (I throw) in 3/4 (three four) time at the speed of an average Mozart or Haydn minuet and trio.

Blue

I have spent the day knitting the edge on a Forest Canopy shoulder shawl, a Christmas present for my sister in a silver grey, 4 ply alpaca. I decided to bead every scallop on every pattern row, making parallel lines of beads using the crochet hook method, I’ve spent all of the afternoon and early evening on it.

When I had done 6 beaded rows it was clear that it was far too ‘bling’ so I have just pulled out the edge and put the beads back in the jar.

It sort of sums up the day.

For Kym

Who is doing a 'Light the Night' walk in aid of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society with her family and friends. A small light to add to the light you shine on all who know you - even those you've never met.

Small Victory

This is me, knitting Continental style. Yes - Continental style and I can do it easily and without much thought.

I have been a serious knitter since my teens - a lot of years, I was taught by Mum who is also a serious knitter. However she left me to find my own way of 'throwing' she does it in a neat, looping way with the yarn wound round her fingers, I do it with a maximum of hand and arm movement, not elegant but I can get up a decent head of steam and what I lack in speed I make up for in hours spent.

To date I never managed to sort out Continental - it kind of made sense because I can also crochet. The breakthrough was the workshop with Alice Starmore on Fairisle knitting - she showed me how she holds yarn in the left hand when doing two colour work with a colour in each hand. She said to hold it close to the needle so the yarn is 'just there'.

I've overdone the knitting recently - I blame a new box set of 'The West Wing' and my right arm and shoulder have started aching a bit too much so today I have concentrated on the Continental and - bingo - its fallen into place.

I'm doing it with chunky on size 6.5mm but the tension is the same as when I throw which is great because I had read that some people get a looser gauge with Continental. One of the drawbacks for me is the awkwardness of purling - even Meg Swansen says her purl isn't the best, but these days I do the majority of my knitting in the round so not so much of a problem.

In case you can't tell, I'm a bit chuffed (as they say in Yorkshire).