Tigger's Wee-Blog

Scully here - strange old day, rain and warm sunshine like alternating turns on a chessboard. Walk was cut short when F announced impending drowned rat status. What does she think I'm made of? Paper? Apparently she didn't want to get her new straw hat wet. I supervised the raggedy old one being stripped of the tape holding it together and ceremoniously chopped up and dropped in the compost bin. "Next year," said F, "it will be parsnips." Not sure I like parsnips. Roasted in goose fat - maybe... These humans had bacon scented something for breakfast. It's unfair. It's unkind even, not to make a whole extra plate with eggs, bacon, sausage (or burger, I'll accept substitutions), lashings of butter and some melty cheese. F told me I'd get heart disease. Is that even a thing? Food goes into my tummy not my heart. F eats porridge. I didn't even get porridge this morning. Lean pickings. I could fade right away - thin as a sheet of paper and ...

Saturday Stitches - Yet More Hats

In a race against time I have been knitting grandchildren hats before Mr B flies out to return to UK on Monday. Why did we not think of that earlier? Perhaps inspired by this last charity hat... ...the Acorn. It is child sized (a function of available scrap yarn) and Mr B suggested it go to his younger grandaughter. I said I could do better and raided the special reserve of double knit woollen yarn. (This Mint Chocolate Chip for charity had by that stage already been completed.) The first of the hats (all lined) for international delivery, this chullo (below) is called Isabelle. This hat (above) was to have a Mohican style fringe fore and aft but we decided to engage the grandson for whom it is intended by telling him to bring it with him when his family visits next autumn and he can choose the colour and get involved in cutting, hooking and trimming it. (He learned crochet in school last year so this activity could build on that as a creative outlet and development of fine...

Nature Friday

My garden isn't well stocked so I've had to get up close and personal with one of the only flowering plants in it this week. Calendula - slightly sticky leaves A grimace from an opening flower - why me? Beautiful once fully open Then strangeness of a bud growing straight out of the centre of a seed head The petals dropped, seedhead exposed, new petals pushed out, then a bud appeared. Mutant calendula. Should get my soil tested 🤔 Glowing chard. How jewel-like is that? Now the really weird and wonderful - that grimace is composed of tiny orange bananas.... surrounding a black hole that is the portal to a distant universe. I mean... how black is that hole?! Close-up of petals; soft glow, rich colour, delicate markings, depth and repetition.

All Kicks Off

Mr B boarded an aeroplane on Monday to start a series of flights that would end in England. He had not even left NZ air space when it all started to go wrong back at base camp. Windows were being delivered as we loaded the van to drive to Nelson airport. When I got back mid-afternoon it was to learn that despite on-site measuring the window manufacturers had made the 'reveals' too wide. (The reveal is the wooden bit you see round the inside of the aluminium frame - the bit that hides all the edges of interior wall lining.) Then I got an email from the Council's Building Department advising that our drainage consent (permit to intall waste water processing) was approaching its first birthday and would be cancelled because we hadn't started! "Don't get me started." That's a saga. I'd planned to get that in first so we'd have a working toilet on site when building work began. The builders and drainage people didn't agree on stuff ; things dra...

Bonus Photos

These two are screen shots from a video Mr B made with his camera drone in late afternoon sun. For some reason Blogger hated the second one and I've had to use some jiggery-pokery to get it pasted into the post. Sorry about the questionable quality on so many fronts.