Two treats.

I treated myself to this book by Rebekah Meier this week.   It is very inspirational and full of useful techniques for all sorts of products and materials.  I have quite a few of those mentioned in the book and am hopeful of having a very creative autumn and winter ahead of me.

I glanced out of the window a couple of days ago and caught sight of this lovely young thrush beside our pond.   He/she is very welcome in the garden as we are plagued with slugs and snails.

It already looks quite well fed but I hope it has room for more food, and perhaps it will bring it's friends.

The spacing here has a mind of it's own.   I ask it nicely to do what I want but one moment it centres everything and the next moment it goes back to left alignment, which is really what I want.

I think an early night is in order tonight.   Last evening at about 8.30 we had a power cut.  It was odd as it only affected the dozen or so houses in our little cul-de-sac. The street lights were still on and the houses all around us had lights.   It wasn't quite dark of course so we just sat for a while thinking it will come on again in a minute.  Gradually darkness fell so I lit candles.  My husband donned his head torch which he uses for DIY in dingy corners, and read his book.  After a while I left him downstairs and went to read in bed by torchlight, something I haven't done since childhood.   At about 2am I was woken by the sound of a lorry engine and reversing signal and then what sounded like someone hitting something with a very large hammer.   I couldn't understand what could be going on at that time of night.  I dozed off eventually and was woken again at about 4am to hear the same lorry driving away and noticed that there was a light on downstairs, so power had been restored.   I went down to turn it off, got back into bed and slept a little more.  This morning we found out what all the noise had been about - to repair the fault, engineers had had to dig a large hole in the pavement outside a neighbour's house just opposite us.   We have been out all day and it is still there so maybe tomorrow someone will come and fill it in.   I am very grateful that our power was restored but have been so tired today after my disturbed night - my husband is deaf so it didn't affect him.   I'm also very grateful that I didn't have to turn out at 2am and spend two hours digging a big hole.