Curtains.

Happy Easter. 

I find it sad that fewer people celebrate this day for it's spiritual importance. Some celebrate with traditions from the cultural heritage (Lithuanians are big on decorating real eggs) while for the majority it should be renamed chocolate day. Sad but true. Maybe it's just society making new cultural traditions, nothing to do with company profits of course. That said Peter did give me two small(ish) chocolate and marzipan eggs which were much appreciated.

We are still basking in the heat so I carried on washing, drying and ironing more of our stored curtains. Last night I was planning which curtains to use with the everyday curtains to increase their insulating capacities. One question that crossed my mind was how to wash the resultant curtains. That was when an idea popped into my mind (I'm sure this has been thought of before). If we have proper curtains poles as I was planning anyway, I could have twice as many curtain rings and hook up both curtains back to back on alternate rings. So I'll try that. A pair of pink velvet curtains which had been passed on to me by a friend looked as if they had be altered a number of times. There was an initial  strip of header tape, then they had been sewn into pencil pleats and later the folds had been stitched together up to the top of the curtains. I unpicked the pleats so that now I have flat curtains with header tape which I can gather if needed.

I had planned to check Speedy's foot under the bandage today but while I was hanging up some washing he managed to get the cone off, then the bandage and of course lick his foot until it bled. Aarrrgh! On the plus side I can see that the raw patches had reduced to a half in just three days. I cleaned everything up, put the bandage back on and tightened up the cat collar that holds the cone on.

Not only was I washing curtains that had been up in the loft but I ventured into the garage to see what state two enormous but very old velvet curtains that kept the draughts from Dingles' front door were in. I had expected them to be horrible and mildewed but it seems that the leaks had missed the boxes they were in. In the end one of them was too far gone to do anything but throw it away but the other may still be of use so had a thorough airing before being repacked.

I brought a bundle of plant support twigs and a tiny pot of blue paint up from the garage. I then painted the ends of the sticks blue and used them to mark which plants will be taken down to Wales. I'll take just two of each variety of hardy geranium as I'm not sure how they'll do in the seaside conditions and my garden plans don't have a lot of space for planting.

It was really too hot to be out for long during the day and it was only later in the afternoon that we sat outside to read. Peter keeps telling me that simply putting the thermometer in the sun doesn't give a true temperature but I was sitting in that same sun and yes it did feel hot. 

We had the mushroom and lentil pie this evening and Peter pronounced it delicious though not quite the same as a beef and ale pie. I thought it was okay but then I'm not a fan of pastry/pies.