Stone

Saturday was a work day, all but one job ticked off my list. The last remaining job will take a bit of time and thought which will come easier with a fresh brain. I now have a full box of bits and on the flat days of cruising to come heading southwards I’m hoping I’ll get lots of those bits painted.

The weekend being a Bank Holiday it feels like we have three Sundays all in a row. So on the first of these we decided to have a roast, chicken with tarragon butter under it’s skin. Very nice it was too.

Second Sunday morning Mick decided to give under our corner cupboard a good clean out. This is a triangular cupboard that pulls out giving access to the corner of the galley. The bottom contents of the deep corner cupboard come out in a drawer which is pulled out by the triangular piece. This all works very well, until too much crud collects, we are starting to get marks on the oak floor.

Tilly is the only one who really knows what goes on down there and she wasn’t being any help what so ever. Nothing for it but to get down on the floor and lie flat on your belly. All the dust, cat fur etc was swept out. Still no improvement! I adopted the horizontal position with Mick gently moving the cupboard. We’d assumed that the marks were being made by the wheels, but watching as the unit moved the marks where in front of the wheels, the worst mark no where near a castor.

A spare piece of card from my model was used to see if there was an obstruction under the plinth on the leading edge of the triangular cupboard. Sure enough there was. The cupboard was lifted slightly and a good sweep under with the card cleared a large bit of grit. We’ll have to keep a better eye on this.

As lunchtime approached we stepped off Oleanna to head to the pub, well it was Sunday after all. A short chat with Nick from NB City of Durham, he’s been a long standing blog reader following us from our yellow days. Nice to meet you.

The Star was where we met up with two old friends, Nikki and Sarah. They used to be Stage Mangers at Hull Truck, then after we moved to a life afloat they started to work at the SJT in Scarborough. They now live in Wem just under an hours drive away.

A few days ago my yarn order still hadn’t arrived in Rode Heath, so I placed another order under Micks name and got it sent by priority delivery to the ladies. As soon as I knew that my order had arrived I cancelled the missing one, asking the company for a refund and mentioning that I’d paid for DPD delivery on the successful order. Later that day I had a full refund and got the delivery charge returned too.

Today as soon as welcome hugs were over I was handed my parcel. 100 grams of variegated German yarn in two shades. The numbers were what I’d ordered, but the picture on the band suggested that they would knit up with stripes, this was not the effect I was after. Time and needles would tell. I refrained from starting straight away, there was lots to catch up on.

Food was selected, two roast beefs ordered which despite being on the menu were not available today! So alternative pork was chosen. We hadn’t expected great things on the food front and we weren’t disappointed, mediocre at it’s best. But the glasses of wine flowed and the company more than made up for it.

They came back to Oleanna to meet her and Tilly for the first time. Three years ago they were going to stay with us for a night in Nottingham when Tilly was only about six months old. More wine was consumed, Sarah sticking to coffee for the drive home. It’s always lovely to see them, hopefully next time they will come cruising with us.

The knitting needles came out later. A tension square needed to work out my pattern and to see how the yarn knitted up. It soon became obvious that the website sample had lied. Yes there are numerous colours and shades, these on the sample looked very mixed up. But row after row the stripes appeared and continued. I’ve got enough knitted to work out my tension and pattern. Tomorrow I’ll see what happens if I split the ball of yarn in half and try knitting alternate rows, will this jumble up the colours to achieve the required effect?

0 Locks, 0 miles, 2 Sundays so far, 1 car left to sort, 1 full box, 1 roast chicken, 2 boaters lying flat, 1 bit of grrrrrit, 2 lovely ladies, 1 pink parcel, 2 balls of yarn, 1 month late, 2 roast beef pork, 1 wine filled afternoon, 1 stripy tension square.