rubykittyruby

  Bye bye snow.  It began falling on Saturday evening and lasted till close of play on Sunday.  By Monday the pristine snow was slushy and grey, occasionally icy and treacherous underfoot.  Today, it's almost a distant memory.  Just the odd dusting here and there.  I'm in West Yorkshire, but I understand North Yorkshire had it worse.  Roads were closed on higher ground, trains cancelled or delayed, people advised to stay at home rather than travel, and farmers having to pull their sheep out of snow drifts.  It really doesn't take a lot of 'bad weather' to make this country's infrastructure grind to a near-halt, does it?  Of course, some areas of the country are now experiencing the flooding that comes after snow melts and rivers swell.  I can't imagine the awful mess, expense and disruption to your life that happens when your home's flooded.  It must be heartbreaking.  Anyway, let's move on to less upsetting subjects.  I'v...

  Do you ever make something and think 'uhm, it's okay, but it's missing a certain something'?  Some kind of spark that gives your sewing (or drawing, painting, crochet or whatever craft) life and energy.  That added extra you can't define but know when you see it.  Or rather, when you don't.   I've been making simple Jude Hill style pieces of stitching, some of which I'm more pleased with than others.   The one on the left - the moon with a face - wasn't right, but I knew what to do to stop it annoying me.  The yellow material I'd used was too harsh a yellow, and the facial expression wasn't what I'd been aiming for.  So I appliqued a more mellow yellow over the original piece, a slightly fiddly thing to do but I was much happier with the result.  I haven't re-sewn the face yet, but probably will.   This other piece - in the photo below - hasn't proved so straightforward to put right.  It looked too plain, and frankl...

I woke up this morning to frost outside and a very definite chill in the air.  Inside, the central heating's chugging away, and I keep imagining my energy bill going up, up, up, but what can you do?  A family member's just had a heat pump and solar panels installed at his home, and it'll be interesting to see how low his energy bills go in the winter months ahead.  I honestly don't understand why our government doesn't launch a huge investment programme across the country, insulating homes and installing solar panels wherever possible.  I know it'd cost a fortune, but it'd be good for the nation's health & well being.  Whether that's pensioners shivering in cold, damp homes, or poorer families not having enough money to eat well or pay childcare costs as they're struggling with huge energy bills.   Anyway, enough of that.  I've been carrying on with various crafty projects.   My 'colour study' efforts are continuing.  So far I...

  Monday morning and after at least a week of grey dreary skies we've finally got a sunny day.  It's amazing what that does for our collective mood, isn't it?  I've spent a lot of the weekend happily - and sometimes irritably - going down various rabbit holes.  You see, the Find my Past website had free access for those two days, so I was merrily building a family tree and scouring old newspaper articles for mention of long-gone family members.  It was enjoyable, but also frustrating when you hit a brick wall and can't get further than a couple of generations ago.  I can find endless records for the Pughs, Dunkleys, Thompsons, Arnolds, etc but can I find my Keyte ancestors?  Their name's liable to be mis-spelt in old records, so I'm looking up Kites and Kytes too.  Anyway, I decided to buy myself a month's access to Ancestry as they were offering an initial month for a tenner.  I just need to remember to cancel before it auto-renews in early ...

  In a few hours time the clocks will be put back an hour and that's that as far as Summer is concerned.  It's always a little disconcerting when the clocks go forward in March or back in October.  There's the feeling of being unbalanced.  Unsettled by the shifting of time in this way.   I've spent part of today finishing this book, 'A Disappearance in Fiji' by Nilima Rao, set in 1914 and concerning the lives of indentured Indians on the island of Fiji.  This was the days of Empire, of colonial rulers and sugar cane plantations where conditions were appalling for the thousands of workers bought over from India.  Not only is it a well written story, but it gave me a glimpse of a slice of history I'd not known about.  In an afterword by the author, she notes that between 1879 and 1916 over 60,000 Indians went to Fiji as indentured servants.  Basically they were contracted to work for a fixed period of several years, for fixed pay, and were...