The inconvenience of winter!

Shall I do a Facebook moan, where all these "privileged" people think they can talk others down and that They Know Best. They appear on nearly every post these days.  I follow (amongst many others) the Dartmoor Public Group where there is - almost daily in this cold spell - a big spat between the people who live up on the moor and know how it is up there when it snows, and those people from the towns who see it as their playground, and then block narrow lanes when they park up, get stuck and demand help, or even - for heaven's sake - have to be told to shove off when they come up after dark and build snowmen on the plot in front of people's houses in a certain moorland town, making so much noise that the occupants have to come and tell them where to go as they are waking their toddler!

We're above the snowline here.  Looking out on my slightly slippy walk this morning, you can see the snow is still laying on the hills and all the local lanes.  Pretty though it is, I want it GONE now! I do not need daily updates from the news telling me that we are all in for temperatures "up to minus 20".  Well, some poor devils up in Scotland are, but not this part of mid-Wales.

This is where I turned round on my walk - a big ice slick on the pull in to a barn.  When running water, it had also gone along the lane and it was dodgy in parts so I had to be careful where I stepped.

Icy splinters.

The lane was clear here, but had a border of icy chippings thrown up.

This is the track to our house, still a bit snowy/icy/slippy. Most inconvenient!!  However, I did go down to the town today to visit the Library, and get the Saturday paper, and draw some money out for Malvern tomorrow (Fleamarket).  I may leave a bit later than usual though and will avoid my slightly-shorter-cut along the lanes to Glasbury and stick to the main roads instead.  Will see how it warms up today.  Even with the windscreen cover on the car, I had to put the blowers on full to unfreeze the wipers which had stuck-to on top of it and the windscreen, and de-ice the other windows. I shall take bread and cheese, a flask of  Mulligatawny soup and I'm about to make a Chocolate Apple Cake.

I didn't go out to the Heritage (history) Society Christmas meal last night, as I didn't trust our slippy track and knew there were areas of ice along the lane in, having walked in on Thursday to collect the car from its MoT.  I just wasn't in the mood, and also had slight worries about being hugger-mugger in a tightly-packed room of folk for several hours, and catching the flu which is doing the rounds.

You can guess which one is for Tam to look at!

The last of the light coloured fabrics for the William Morris quilt.  On Monday I shall start cutting out the fabrics.  Executive decision has been made to leave out the square in the Ohio Star block.  Why make things even more testing for me?

Talking about things testing me, I pushed my nose to the grindstone yesterday and MADE myself work on the repairs to the Victorian quilt.  I knew it wouldn't be easy but persevered.  I shall try and do at least one little diamond a day, but it's hard when you are sewing through the cardboard shapes and trying to make any stitches on the back lining invisible and most of all, desperately trying not to rip any of the other VERY fragile silks.  Fortunately, I have a box of Japanese silk remnants which I think it was Elaine (Tales From Parsonage Cottage) kindly sent me a couple of years ago, finally they have come into their own.

Having searched frustratingly high and low in this house for a book I was more than 3/4 way through over Christmas and thought totally lost, I picked up my handy little shopping bag today to take my Library books back in and there it was.  I'm glad about that. (A Whisper of Sorrows, by JD Kirk).  So there was just the gilt cream to finish the frame on the horse picture which I needed to hunt down - again, I had seen it but thought I'd moved it somewhere.  When I looked properly just now, it came to light.  I'm a devil for not looking properly, or making piles of things (WIPs), or putting things off till tomorrow.  That is something I am attempting to put right in2025.  No procrastination!

So, completely fed up with being cold, not being able to get out, not being able to make proper plans, having the weather an unknown and rather worrying factor for future events (including the February Fair) and until today, not being able to get out for a walk either, I shall hold hard to the notion that winter is blardy Inconvenient!  Roll on spring.