Early Finish

Today is the first occurrence of Mr L’s working week terminating on Thursday. It has taken me by surprise. I need to fit more in to the four days that I have to play with. Am still feeling sub-par and have done very little this week. I keep looking at the mess that I need to clear up and then… doing nothing. Have done no knitting since before we went away in the van, so I cannot blame that obsession for getting in the way. The new water pump arrived this morning so I suppose Mr L will now be torn to know what to do tomorrow: fit the front door or fix the campervan. Plans are firming up for our second trip away. We are definitely going to look around East Mainland and we certainly want to fit in an evening meal at the Dil Se – it has been many long years since we were able to go out for a curry. Apart from that, we’ll do things free and easy. Ferries have however been booked. If the weather looks shocking or if the van is not ready, we shall cancel. It’s better this way than suddenly deciding to go and then finding Brunhilde has no berth on the boat. I have been working at building my networks over on Blipfoto and have put the effort to good use by quizzing one of my Orkney contacts about places to go with the dogs. It’s not always easy to tell with maps and aerial views, or even with Streetview,  just what will be an ideal spot and which will not. Local advice and experience is by far the best way – and a photo-making, dog-walking resident is just who I need to turn to for advice. In other news, I have a small pot of money that I was saving up for some camera stuff: a decent backpack, an extension tube for the Canon 70-200mm lens, and a tripod mounting bracket for the heavy lenses. I’m ready to spend it but I’m havering over that purchase and whether I would not do better to buy a folding spinning wheel that I can take away with me in the van. I fancy a Louet Victoria, though the Lendrum is also nice. The sensible purchase would be to buy an Ashford Joy from Sanday Spinners, of course, but the Joy is a tad bulky and heavy and does that thing where the bobbin screws off when you least expect it. It also needs special bobbins. Special bobbins = extra cost. That would be true of the Louet and the Lendrum too, of course. The Schacht Sidekick takes the same bobbins as my main wheel, the Schacht Matchless, which sounds quite efficient until you look up the price of a Sidekick in the UK. Eep! I took a peek at eBay and found no secondhand travelling wheels today. I shall keep looking and chewing the matter over. A 400mm reach with the big lens would be nice… This afternoon I spent some time in sorting out games for the campervan.  After several weeks of searching I have finally found the cribbage board – hurrah! Also going in is the chess set, backgammon, a compendium of games, [su_tooltip style=”jtools” position=”north” content=”I would love to find some groatie buckies, sufficient to play Mancala with…”]a mancala set[/su_tooltip] and of course, the Scrabble.  The weather is definitely Autumnal now and the nights are drawing in but I’ve included the Boules in case of fair weather.

Harvest time
Autumnal

Mr L is arranging a new car radio for the van. This one sports an iPod docking station and supports USB. He’s bought an 8GB mini USB stick which is now plugged in to my PC and I have been charged with copying our music over. He reckons half of our collection will fit and so far I am up to Brandon Flowers… in the B section, that is, not the F. It’s going to take a wee while. So, we have games and we have music. I plan to install the Audible Player on Mr L’s iPod too, then we can have books even if the battery for the lights has gone flat. We have discussed obtaining some data bandwidth but eventually discounted the notion. I am still very reticent about being connected to the world when we are getting away from it all. It’s a very half-hearted approach, isn’t it – to keep one’s finger on one’s email pulse? Besides, the chances of our receiving a signal in the kind of places we want to go is low at best. I think I need to worry more about packing woollies, porridge and wellies than I do to worry about Internet connections. Shall I take the e-Spinner?

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