A few more things ticked off the neverending lists

 We had the roofers in on Thursday at long last, to fix our leaking skylight.  Funnily enough, although it took about four weeks of 'forgotten' appointments, chasing phonecalls and message trading to actually get them here, miraculously their invoice for payment arrived through the letterbox the same evening that they did the work.  But anyway, they did a great job and hopefully we need no longer fear the  rainfall  (we will still fear the torrential rain after the flooding episode....).  It turns out that whomever fitted the velux-type skylight for the previous owners did an absolute bodge job so it had probably leaked from day one. Once the roofers took the slates off, I poked my head out so they could show me.  The frame had been installed with a gap all the way around it between the skylight and the roofing felt, so nothing to stop any water that found its way under the slates from getting into the roof void.  Over the years this had damaged the felt which then deteriorated, exposing more and more of the underside of the roof.  In two places the gap had grown as wide as my fist and the wood lathes underneath were rotting.  That's why the water was pouring in when it rained heavily, as compared to three or four years ago when we just got the odd drip.  

Anyway, they've replaced the rotten wood, and lapped on new roof felt to seal all the holes and seal properly to the window frame, so hopefully it is all watertight now.  It rained yesterday at a medium level and nothing came inside anyway.

After the repair

In order to prepare the traffic route for the roofers to reach the attic floor, as a precaution we took down all the pictures from the walls along the way, emptied and moved two bookcases and a third full of photos, and moved a cabinet full of photos and boardgames.  We did that last weekend then this weekend we had to put it all back again.  DH had to share DS's dining room office on the day, which it seems they both found companionable. I spent the day on drink-making duty and roofer management, while otherwise doing some sewing.

In the wake of finishing the top for the Janet Clare BOM quilt, I made myself fold and put away all the fabrics I had pulled from stash for the quilt. And then I even cut up all the smaller leftovers into the sizes to fit my scrap system.  I keep my scraps in quite a small pail now, and the pail was full. I'm trying to avoid a scrap mountain building up like in the past which then takes days to process. Not sure what I'm going to do next, think I might whip off a quick tote bag and then look at what's next in the project queue.

After finishing the Ness of Brodgar fingerless mitts, I had a look at my knitting queue to choose the next project.  I had a skein of hand-dyed sock yarn with co-ordinating mini skein in the Coast colourway from The Wool Barn, purchased at Fibre East last year.  So I'm knitting a pair of vanilla socks using my usual pattern. It feels oddly comforting to be knitting socks again.  I was on a real sock-knitting kick for a few years but haven't done any for a while now.  I can knit the vanilla pattern without really having to look much at what I'm doing, and the repetitive action is somewhat meditative. The yarn is lovely, with subtle flecks of colour evoking sand and water.

I'm trying to make a push on handquilting the 25 block applique quilt in an effort to get the frame out the living room before Christmas.  I'm almost at the end of the penultimate row now.   Although obviously we won't be having anyone round for Christmas but it would still be nice to be able to decorate the room without working around a giant white pipe construction.

I've decided that there is a miniature black hole at the other end of my strip of Bucks Lace edging because it seems like no matter how much I do, it is still not long enough to go around the edge of the fabric centre.  Everytime I hold the lace up to the fabric to measure it, there always seems to be the same shortfall of 3-4 inches even though I've made several repeats since the last time I measured.  One day it will be finished, I'm a bit fed up with it now.  We aren't having so many long meetings at work now so I'm not getting as much lace time in as I used to.

Yesterday we spent a few hours winterising the garden, another thing ticked off the lists.  We cocoon the big fountain to protect it from frost and move a lot of the other ornaments and furniture into the shed for the winter.  I also got DH to open up both compost containers, shovel out all the usable compost so I could use that to mulch a variety of semi-hardy plants, then he turned over what was left to mix it up more.  Our compost is not always very successful but it seemed to be a good batch this time. Maybe getting wet in the flood did it good?

I succumbed to family pressure and bought in some Halloween candy just for us to eat as we won't be open to trick-or-treaters this year for obvious reasons.  My waistline will not thank me.