A Bargain.

There was no frost this morning and it felt relatively warm. Later in the day when I was in town the temperature plummeted as an icy wind blew. Not nice at all.

When I got to the stables this morning having negotiated yet more pot holes in the track and a large heap of stones that forced me to drive partially on the grass verge, I found that there were only three of us in the lesson. Today I was riding Meg, one of the new horses. She's big, 16.1hh and very broad but getting fitter. As we trotted around the corner of the school the wind blew in the trees outside and she spooked. I stayed on but it took quite a few more times past that corner for her to stop reacting. I even had to ride the corner behind another pony and then with Katie who was teaching us, walking beside us and giving Meg lots of praise. It was while we were doing all this that somebody noticed that beyond the tree there was a large area of black plastic on the ground that was billowing up in the wind which was probably making Meg react. I had a couple of canters on Meg and it was so funny. She's like a galumphing warhorse with her legs thumping down into the ground.

I had a large bag of stuff for the charity shop so course I had my usual quick look around several of the other charity shops. It was in the Oxfam shop that I found my bargain. While I don't bother much with the clothes in charity shops since I have more than enough at home a recent reel on FB had reminded me that it is possible to find top quality men's jumpers if you take time to look at the labels. I had recently tried and failed to find a cashmere jumper for Peter in M&S (they have them on-line but not in the store) as with his arthritis he really feels the cold. And yes, you've guessed correctly I found him a cashmere jumper. A brand new, still with the original label, navy blue crew neck cashmere jumper from Jaeger. At £50 it was still very pricey but at least the money will be going to help others and the original price was..... £175. I can't show a photo because Peter put it on straight away, declared it perfect and disappeared into his study.

My one job at home was to eliminate all signs of the silver sequins which included hoovering the whole place. The remaining sequinned offcuts are safely ensconced in a zip lock bag, not that there was much left over. I'll wait a while before I do anything with the gold sequinned top. 

Glitterball.

Sunny and very cold today. 

I was very glad that I had put a towel over the car's windscreen last night as there was a heavy frost in the morning. Even so it took a while to scrape the ice off the other windows and for the windscreen to warm up enough for me to see out. I had to be off early(ish) for a physio appointment in town. I'd referred myself for an appointment in order to find out which exercises would help with a newly painful area of my back. The physiotherapist gave me a set of exercises most of which are ones we do in Pilates, to do twice a day and I have a follow up appointment in three weeks.

As soon as I got home I carried on with the silver top which was completed half an hour before I needed to leave for aerobics. I did get plenty of nice comments and I don't care if I do look like a glitterball. Aerobics is the only time I'll ever have a chance to wear sequins and making this top was a fun challenge. I found one drawback in that my long hair kept getting caught in the sequins and I had to wind it up into a messy bun to keep it out of the way.

 

In between all the sewing we had our Welsh class. At last we have started the next level. As we thought it was mostly revision though we were pushed a bit on vocabulary. I amazed myself by remembering the word for congratulations - llongyfarchiadau (llon-ger-var-chree-ad-eye) which I must have heard somewhere as we haven't had it before on the course.

A Walk up the Roman Steps.

Today we had a grey morning followed by a sunny afternoon.

Not a bad day for going out for a walk with Peter. (If it's not raining it's a good day.) First we drove to Mach and called in at the Royal House Café to stock up with their delicious food.  That included a panini for Peter and a custard slice for me to eat on our walk.

Parking by the roundabout on the way in to Mach we climbed the Roman Steps. They follow a medieval packhorse trail that leads to Wylfa Common where the Romans had a lookout post so they might possibly have been roman. Other sources suggest they were cut by the workers in medieval times to get to the quarry on the common.

It was a steepish climb that gave us great views across the valley and northwards into Snowdonia.

Something we really like about this part of Wales is the way you can quickly get into wild country. The main roads run along the valleys through a scattering of villages and small towns and usually just a strip of fields on either side. But turn off the main road onto one of these single track roads and within a mile or less you reach what I like to call the wild country.

They may be farms on the softly sloping hill tops but the rest is either forestry land or sheep grazing land. And luckily for us most of this is open access for people like us to walk, cycle or (I presume) to ride on.

We followed a path up on to Wylfa Common where we found a spot to perch and enjoy the view. Much as the romans might have done. I found a reference to a roman lookout post on Wylfa Common which would make sense as there are the remains of a roman fort over at Pennal on the other side of the valley. There we stopped to have our lunch. The wind was icy so I was glad of the coffee that we had brought with us.

From there we retraced our steps back to the car at Mach. We had parked in a large lay-by in which as usual were two converted lorries complete with solar panels, a generator and crazy painted on designs. What caught Peter's eye was this Hanomag truck. It's a German army truck complete with turret for a machine gunner.

The bias binding finally arrived in the post and I have already sewn bias binding on both armholes. There is a slight possibility I'll have it done by the time for aerobics but I have got a full day tomorrow so we'll see. My sewing nearly caused a disaster this afternoon. As it was hard to see when sewing black bias binding on black netting with black thread, now there's a surprise, I fetched an old desk lamp to give me some better light. All went well until ..... with a flash and a bang off went the light and so too my PC. I pulled the light plug out of the wall socket and tried to restart my PC but to no avail. Had I killed my poor PC? It turned out the breaker had gone and all the sockets on this side of the house were off including the internet router. I disconnected my PC from the wall and once Peter reset the breaker all was back to normal. The faulty lamp will be going straight to the dump.

It was probably a good thing we went for a walk which included lots of 'up' as last night's Pilates was mostly kettlebells. Rachel kept warning us that we would feel the effects on Thursday so hopefully keeping moving will have done me good. It was quite funny before the class last night as we compared all the different kettlebells we had brought along. I had brought my 4kg one as I think the 6kg is not only too heavy for me right now but it would have been hard work carrying it there and back. People had brought all different weights of kettlebell along from 2kg to 10kg. There are also some mini ones that are very deceptive. Although only the size of a large grapefruit they too can weigh up to 10kg. The lady next to me had been given a 10kg one by a friend but realised she wasn't going to be able to use it. Luckily Rachel our teacher swapped it for a 6kg one.

Tonight I've been to choir, the first time since before Christmas. There were 20 of us and we mainly sang familiar songs to get us back into the swing of things. We don't spend too much time chatting but it was nice to see familiar faces again.

Windy.

The day began wild, wet and windy. Not a day for going to the zoo or for hanging out washing. The sun graced us with an appearance right at the end of the afternoon.

The next job in the bedroom was to take down all the storage tubs from the cupboards above the wardrobes. These also needed a wipe over and at the same time I was able to check the contents. Hooray, I managed to fill a large bag with stuff for the charity shop. Being drawn to fabrics that are soft to the touch I would buy fluffy fleeces and pjs (dressing gowns too) to put away for the future when either fashions changed but my preferences didn't or if we moved somewhere with few clothing shops. Here in Aber there's just M&S and Matalan and a couple of small shops in the main shopping street or the supermarkets for clothes.  (There's a large Next but that's out of town and I haven't bothered.) Of course there are some sports and outdoor shops and riding clothes at Charlie's which also has a limited amount of other clothing. However the lack of choice doesn't bother me as my stash of clothing was bought with that in mind. But I was pleased that I was able to sort out some of my clothing for the charity shop. 

The rest of my time was taken up with pinging sequins. I'm now waiting for the postman to bring me the bias binding though I've not much hope of finishing the first top in time for Thursday's class.

A hint of colour from the early crocuses.

Wow, sunshine.

Mach Monday.

It didn't rain at all today and we saw some lovely sunshine as we drove up to Mach.

As I sat outside with my tea I saw a female blackbird perched on top of the street hedge. Then she suddenly flew down into the garden and disappeared from sight probably to the rockery right under the terrace. Even though I haven't put seeds out on the terrace for months mainly because the birds kept leaving droppings but also because any wind just blew the seeds away, I wondered if she was coming for food. Sure enough having made a vertical take off she appeared on the edge of the terrace, slid under the glass and had a futile hunt for seeds. Of course I went and got some seeds but by that time the blackbird had gone down for a bath instead. Later in the afternoon I saw a robin collecting the last few seeds from the terrace. Our neighbour behind us keeps a well stocked bird table and feeders so I know the local birds aren't going hungry.

Then my eye was caught by the smoke of what I hope was a bonfire. As it was at least four or five miles away I couldn't zoom in to pick out more details. It did go out fairly quickly.

This morning we were in the library in Mach along with the busy mother and baby group. We did more from the exam practice papers, finished the book we were reading, went over last week's homework and then.... had a look at the first unit of the sylfaen course. It wasn't too hard as the course would usually start after the long summer holiday with possibly a new tutor and a new group of students. The first unit is mainly revision and 'getting to know you' exercises.

In the afternoon I baked a Bara Brith and did some more cleaning in our bedroom. I wiped down the Venetian blinds, the jugs and other bits on the sills and the two large windows. I also hand washed one of the muslin 'net' curtains. I had washed the first one a while back but hadn't got round to do the second one until now. There might even be time now to do a bit more sequin pinging.

From yesterday's walk.

A Walk Along The Ystwyth.

When I saw the sunrise it wasn't hard to predict that there would be rain today. We had some in the morning with steady drizzle setting in at midday. 

But without the rain there wouldn't be rainbows. I was still drinking tea in bed (how very decadent) when Peter spotted this double rainbow through the window. I ran outside and could see the whole arc reaching from the cliff here right over to Tywyn but couldn't get far enough back to get it all in the photo.

I wasn't sure about going on the walk but as I have never not enjoyed going on these walks off I went and of course it was great to be out in the countryside chatting to the other members of the group. 

The Afon (river) Ystwyth flows through a valley south of Aberystwyth. We met at Llanilar and walked along the old railway line. Up for three miles, stopped for lunch perched on the side like a bunch of starlings and back again. Normally we follow a circular route but as that would have meant walking back along a road we opted for a there and back again walk. 

One one side was the river and on the other fields. This suspension bridge curved up and over the river and of course some of us had to walk to the middle and get the bridge bouncing up and down. If you tired really hard it moved sideways as well. I know, you can't take a group of older people anywhere.

We passed this old farm that is being renovated and were impressed with the size of the two stone millstones. A shame about the red builders' bag between them though in general it all looked very tidy.

We caught the rain right at the end of the walk and when I got home Peter informed me that it had been raining non stop here. We are eating early tonight as we shall be watching the extended edition of The Two Towers which runs for 3 hours and 55 minutes. 

Sunny Morning.

The day began cold and sunny with enough of a breeze to make it worth hanging the washing out on the line. The clouds began rolling in later in the afternoon.

My spring cleaning has now moved on to our bedroom. I began by taking all the storage tubs out from the bottom of the wardrobes and wiping them down. I'm not sure if all the dust is from this last year or if I hadn't got round to doing them for a while. I found a few things that can go to the charity shop which is always good. Before replacing the tubs I cleaned the wardrobe floors and walls and of course one wall needed wiping with bleach, again.

By the time I had done all that and later the ironing time had run out with not a lot left for sequin pinging. Yesterday I sewed the grey bias binding around the first armhole and now I've decided that it doesn't look right. Black will be so much better. I've ordered some satin bias binding and while I wait for it to arrive I can keep on with removing sequins which is the lengthiest part of the job.