Solitary Confinement

I'm starting with profuse apologies tonight ... to all my co-workers. As I have mentioned before, I am addicted to brussels sprouts, I absolutely love them. And when I was cooking my dinner tonight I went a bit mad. I put what I would normally eat (which is still lots and lots) into my microwave dish (on top of my salmon - it works really well to throw them in on top of my fish and cook them together), but because there weren't really *that* many left in the pack (I only do frozen ones, I can't be doing with peeling etc) I threw the rest in. And I knew it was excessive, but they are veg, and they are delicious and I love 'em.

In my defence, I have my own office, which is probably just as well. But I daresay I will spend tomorrow farting up a storm!

An interesting day today. Me and Colin went out on our own to do the shopping. We stopped at B&Q first because we wanted to look at getting another heater. We don't have a radiator in our living room, it was removed two years ago when we were getting ready to decorate, and not put back - mainly because it was on the longest stretch of wall, where the couch needed to go. No point having a radiator that warms up the back of the couch really. Obviously in the winter it gets very cold in here - worse because the cellar is underneath this room, and it is really cold down there. We have one of those plug in convector heaters that does a reasonably good job of keeping us warm in here (though I am a big advocate of turn the heat down and put on another layer of clothing), but with the snowy subzero temperatures of late it has been noticeably much colder in here. We splashed out on a snazzy oil-filled radiator, which at the moment is keeping the cellar cosy and warm (Colin and Sean use it as a workshop cum office for the stamps), with the added extra of the heat rising and helping to keep the chill off the living room.

While in B&Q I managed to snaffle a bag of orchid compost, and a new plant pot. I have a beautiful orchid at work which flowers a lot, and had a massive offshoot of stalk and lots of root, midway up the original stalk. It's always looked great, but over the last couple of weeks the roots had started to shrivel up, and I was worried that the whole plant was going to die, but a close inspection on Thursday revealed that there is a firm bud just starting at the end of the stalk, and that the reason the roots had shrivelled was because the entire thing had come away from the original stalk. I immediately found an empty pot and put it in there with an inch or so of water, and by the time I came home on Friday night half the roots had plumped back out again to their original state ... so I am hopeful that if I pot it up properly tomorrow with the orchid compost I will be able to save it.

Our next stop was Sainsburys. I was flabbergasted that such a big store had so little food! I usually spend about £40 on fruit and veg alone - but today there were no courgettes, mushrooms, potatoes, leeks and god knows what else. The shelves were bare (my veggie spend was about £15). Despite this, we still managed to spend over £100 (this is the problem when Colin comes shopping). I found an amazing bargain, of a fleece blanket in a cute blue camo print for just over £2. Having a chilly living room means that I like to have a blanket or two at hand for snuggling up underneath with my Ethan. Mum bought him a Ben 10 fleece blanket for Christmas, so now we have an extra layer to add (and it might stop him hassling me to let him have his sleeping bag!)

Our final stop was Currys. Colin has been wanting a flat screen TV for the bedroom for some time (I nearly bought him one for Christmas, but he wanted his posh expensive satnav for the van instead). We bought one (why do we really need it?) that he can plug Popcorn Hour into, plus it is HD ready, has freeview and we can plug a memory stick into it to play downloads directly. The bribe today was that he had to clear up his half of the bedroom, and my God, I believe we have discovered that we have carpet up there! He really is the most untidy, messy so and so I know (not that I'm perfect). We really need to get that bedroom finished. I am trying to be ruthless and bin everything that we don't use/need/want, but we are unfortunately a family of hoarders. He's also put my new blind up (same as the wooden ones we bought for the living room), though not without some frustration. The blinds were made to measure, but when we measured the windows we measured the bottom of the window frame. We've discovered tonight that the top of the window frame is almost 1 cm narrower ... aaarrrggghhh!!! After a lot of hassle, Colin has filed the top bar of the blind down enough to make it fit (it is metal and it took him ages). But finally, that nasty tatty Ikea blind has gone ...

As you can see, it's been a busy day. I haven't so much as looked at any knitting. However, I did stumble across a new online yarn store (when I say new, I mean new to me - I wasn't aware it existed before today). It's Pure Purl, and the site itself is really fresh looking. Plus, she sells all sorts of yummy yarns (and has 10% off all sock yarns at the moment). I got a couple of skeins (different shades) of Kureyon Sock, a skein of Malabrigo Lace (I'm planning to knit Citron from it ... and lastly a skein of Ranco Multi. Given that I went looking for Malabrigo sock, I think that's pretty good going! So I've spent a fortune this weekend on yarn that I don't really need, but while I've got the urge to knit I'm gonna feed it!

Damn, it's midnight already. I suppose I'd better go and see how far Colin has got with the bedroom, in the hopes that we can get the bed cleared off and get some sleep at some point tonight. I think I shall take my knitting bag upstairs with me though, just in case I can't resist that urge to do a few rows before dropping off!