I aten't dead.

[curiouswombat]

For anyone who needed their day brightening a little -

Yesterday morning the first two flowers on Barbie the camellia opened;



In one of the pots there are anemones in flower;



And this is my favourite snowdrop picture from this year;



And in the kitchen the gerbera that is now 4 years old, has had a new lease of life since I re-potted it;




In other news I have been involved in a lot of discussions and meetings regarding the Churches' Bookshop. Like so many small shops, especially small bookshops, and also a good few bigger ones, the shop is struggling. There is reduced footfall throughout town, and we are less obvious than we were when we were hosted by the town centre methodist church (they asked us to leave as there was building work due involving demolishing our old corner shop - sadly it is still not done over 2 years later). People who come in are more inclined to buy cards than books, and we have had a poorer Christmas than expected. The result is that we need to consider can we continue, or should we look to closing. Currently we think we can keep going to Easter, anyway.

A local, family run, electrical goods shop which has been in business for over 40 years has announced that it is closing down. We have bought a lot of our white goods there over the years and so we went along and made our last purchases yesterday in their closing down sale - a new fridge-freezer for the garage, and a new cordless vacuum. The current fridge-freezer is only quite small, it was D-d's when she lived alone, and the chance of a more powerful vacuum than the current one seemed a good idea too.

The fridge-freezer is getting delivered tomorrow, and so we have been eating out of the current freezers so we can, in the short term, fit everything into the fitted, under-bench freezer. So yesterday we had macaroni cheese out of the freezer, and for dinner tonight we had a plate of pigs in blankets which I had forgotten over Christmas and New Year, with a pile of frozen peas to use up the rest of the packet!

I have been destressing by knitting the rest of the squares for a blanket I started last summer - and beginning to make some knitted Manx bunting for Tynwald Day and the Coronation. Here is the first piece of bunting on top of the last of the 48 squares;



The three legs symbol is made from what we call 'French knitting' - made with my new toy - one of these, although mine cost less than that. It is rather fun to use :)

And my tasks for the rest of the week include making a celebratory cake for my sister and her husband's 40th wedding anniversary party on Saturday.

So that is the current state of the wombat.

Comments

[elwendell]

Gosh. That brings back memories. Standing in the school playground with the tail end of one of Mum's balls of wool, and a cotton real with four tacks in the top. I think the only thing I ever made from my efforts was a coaster, however. That machine looks very snazzy in comparison.

[just_ann_now]

I envy your garden, especially the camellia! I have snowdrops, aconites, some hellebores, and some daffodils in bud. It won't be long!

[cmcmck]

Glad to hear it and thanks for the pretties! :o)

[cairistiona]

I'm sorry the bookstore and other stores are struggling. The economy these days is just terrible all over. I received a notice from the furniture store where we bought our couch and a chair that the owners are retiring and the store is closing this week. If my car is up to it, I plan on going over there after a dental appointment this morning, just to see if there's any small decor item I can get as a memento, though honestly the leather frame chair should last forever even if the couch eventually must be replaced. I've known the owner for over 30 years and will be sorry to see the store gone, but at least they're closing it for a good reason--retirement--rather than poor sales. It's just another reminder of how much I hate change. *sigh*

[grundyscribbling]

That snowdrop photo is fantastic!

How does the toy work? I've never seen one before. (Is it similar to a knitting spool?)

[curiouswombat]

I don't think I ever even got as far as a coaster. So turning out around 1m in 15 minutes is like magic! And it is just right for this job.

[curiouswombat]

The camellia makes me so happy every February! My poor hellebores were accidentally killed by an over-enthusiastic bit of strimming that went too close to the tree they lived under :(

[curiouswombat]

Thank you - and my pleasure!

[curiouswombat]

That's how we felt about the electrical goods store. The owners had decided to retire and had put the business on the market, but nobody wanted to buy it and in the end they decided to close and retire anyway.

[curiouswombat]

Thank you - I am really pleased with that snowdrop picture.

And yes, it is like a knitting spool but there are 4 little hooks that rotate as you turn the handle and pull the yarn down through the previous row of stitches. It is really clever, and turns out knitted braid at great speed when you think of how long it took to even get the braid from the top to the bottom of a 4 pin knitting spool.

[ysilme]

Considering your snow pictures of today on LJ, one feels the need to check twice for the date of that post... *g* But such temperature changes aren't that unusual after all.
How beautiful these all are! The snowdrop pic is my favourite, that's a really good one.
I'm sorry to hear the bookshop is struggling. Unfortunately this has become far too commmon these days. I keep my fingers crossed for you for business picking up again!
I've heard of cases where the shop owners went mobile instead of closing, using a van or special type of trailer, which seems to have been quite successful in the cases I heard about. But of course this is a major enterprise, if it's possible at all depending on legal and insurance questions etc. - such a vehicle likely needs to be purchased and requires tax and insurance and so on.
Sorry about the other local shop, too, but it's nice you could give them business for a last time.
Yay for knitting! That bunting piece looks terrific, great job! TIL what I know as "knitted rope" is called French knitting. *g* The device is called "knitting mill" in German, quite a fun term I think, and the manual one "knitting Lizzie" - my generation all had to have one for primary school where we produced endless yards of knitted rope nobody ever used. XD I've been considering getting one with a crank, too, but need to try something out at first as I'd need it for a project related to our new "artifical" Christmas tree (one made of wooden bars; I'll post about it some time as we had it up for the first time last year).

[curiouswombat]

I must copy the snow post over here, too. It is quite a contrast.

The bookshop looks as if it might survive for a little longer - we would gain no benefit from going mobile as the church who own our current premises charge us only a nominal rent. But we are trying to encourage more local churches to have a small book and card stand as we have found the three churches that do this have sales of about £150 per month in total, which is not a lot, but on the small scale on which we work, if some of the others did likewise it genuinely would help.

This was described as a knitting mill, too - I think my old one from childhood was just called a knitting bobbin. The person I saw with a mill was actually making metres and metres of rope and then knitting that on very think needles to make very warm hats!