Happy Birthday, Vytas.

It's our oldest son Vytas' birthday today, how those 35 years have flown by. This year he and his wife Sally adopted a shy rescue cat and bought their first home. A major achievement for young people nowadays. No adventurous exotic holidays for them this year because of the pandemic but they did go walking along Hadrian's wall and have been on lots of walks in their local area.

These are the chocolate truffles I made for him, dark chocolate ones and white chocolate with dried cranberries both liberally sprinkled with edible glitter. I reused a box from some Christmas chocolates. I also sent him a pair of Hobbit style fingerless mittens that I knitted last year but I forgot to take a photo before I sent them off. A shame as I'd ombre'd two colours together as I was using up the last of the wool from a New Zealand farm.

Here it's been warm again with frequent heavy showers. I had two gardening sessions, one before breakfast and one in the afternoon. I dug up another six clumps of brambles but even so I can still count a dozen more that need to go.

The delivery from B&Q turned up at lunchtime. The hall by the front door is getting very crowded, so much that it needs careful manoeuvring to get out of the front door. As well as everything that should go in my study; desk, filing cabinet, wooden chest, bar stool, piano stool, piano stand and many boxes there are; the trundle beds and two mattresses, an ironing board, a boxed sink, four curtain poles and now; a 3m wooden work top, a base cupboard, a wall cupboard, four cupboard doors and a bag of handles and hinges. To get my gardening coat out I had to squeeze my arm in through the four inch opening that is as far as I can open the coat cupboards door, and drag the coat out. No chance of getting it back in again.

Later on I heard a commotion outside, had a look and there were the scaffolders unloading and putting up the scaffolding so the builder can take down the chimneys. 

I did get half-way up the ladder before deciding maybe I didn't need to take photos from roof height. Perhaps I'll try again tomorrow.

And ...... I painted two coats of paint on the bare plaster around the sitting room French doors. I used a brush, not a very good one as I kept having to pick off loose bristles from the painted wall but I needed to cut in around the door frame something I'm not very good at. 

The indoor builder came round after work with his plasterer who is coming tomorrow to repair the poor plastering around the window in my study. It's a shame as those plasterers did the repairs on the wonky edge above the French doors. Peter had a quiet word with the builder about the tiles in the utility room, too nicely in my view and I believe the builder is going to replace the two worst tiles and use some special stuff to clean the excess grout off the tiles. I still think the whole job is poorly done but we'll see if it looks any better after the builder has worked on it.