Highs and Lows

Well, what a week it’s been! After all the excited anticipation for the eclipse last Friday, not to mention all my faffing about careful preparations to set up my telescope and ensure that I could mount my camera on it for photographing the great event, it turned out cloudier than bath of asses’ milk and a good deal less beautifying.

Consequently, at 9.30am, at maximum eclipse, the best I managed was this:

If the clouds parted you still wouldn’t see the sun anyway

I ended up watching the whole event on the BBC, where they did manage to have some decent images to look at, although I did have to put up with Prof. Brian Cox’s annoying voice. I was massively disappointed at not having had the opportunity to see it myself though, especially since I missed the ’99 Total Eclipse, which we travelled to Cornwall to see and missed due to the cloud cover. Needless to say, on both occasions, once it was all over the clouds cleared and the sun came out. Bloody weather! 🙁

Things looked up somewhat with the Tarot Blog Hop launching fairly smoothly that evening with an excellent crop of creative and thought provoking posts. I’m particularly pleased since I set the topic. You can read all the posts using the links here 😀

There were yet more ups and downs on Saturday with the epic final day of the Rugby Six Nations tournament. Oh my, what a roller coaster of emotion that was! If you saw it, then you won’t need me to tell you, if you didn’t, I’ve included a brief account at the end of this post*. Over seven hours of quality, buttock-clenchingly exciting Rugby and I’m pretty sure my gluteus muscles are now well-toned 😀

Still more excitement in some quarters over the remains of Richard III making their penultimate journey to rest in repose before burial. Although I am interested albeit not that excited, I must admit that I found the media reporting extremely irritating, especially C4’s needless “Oh yes he did/Oh no he didn’t” pantomime regarding the fate of the two princes in the Tower. Personally, I’m inclined to believe that Richard has gone down in history as the villain of the piece thanks to an excellent hatchet on Shakepeare’s part. A writer of that calibre who was ingratiating himself with his Tudor patrons by slamming the loser – Richard never stood a chance. If he didn’t have one in his lifetime, I’m pretty sure he had the hump after that.

As if all this wasn’t enough, it was also Mothers’ Day (lovely carnations and a homemade carrot cake from DD) and DH birthday last week (a big one) and so there were boozy lunches and the best coffee and walnut cake (made by DD’s own hand) to be consumed. Cakefest! Nom! 😀

Finally, I also made a start on the Japanese shawl challenge and it is surprisingly unchallenging. The charts are much more straightforward than they look, though despite explaining this to my Eviller Twin and sending written instructions for the first 25 rows, she has remained strangely silent on the matter. *sigh* I, on the other hand, am on the final row of the first chart. Here’s how it looks so far:

The yarn is Sublime Baby Cashmere Merino Silk 4ply in Sweet Pea colour, that being the closest yarn I could find to the composition of the yarn stated in the pattern and a guess at the yarn weight based on the gauge. It’s lovely and soft with a beautiful stitch definition.

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*First, Wales, who were in 3rd place lagging by 26 points and were 11-13 down at half time looked like they were out of the running. Then, I’d some of what they had during the interval, because they came out and scored and kept scoring, managing to defeat Italy in spectacular style with a final score of 61-20. Yet, even though Italy were getting a complete dubbing, they managed to come back and score a try in the dying minutes of the game. If only all Rugby matches could be like that. Oh wait, on Saturday they were!

Did I mention that I’m not really a sports fan? Rugby is the exception 🙂

Ireland, not unexpectedly, because Scotland are a bit rubbish these days, won 40-10, which left England in exactly the same position that Wales had started in – 26 points behind – but with a much tougher opposition against France. They came out and scored in the first few minutes, France scored in return, and so it continued for most of the game with tit for tat scoring, until England finally managed to pull ahead. With the clock at 79 minutes and England needing 7 points to win the Six Nations, they were inches away from scoring that last try. France regained possession and we thought it was all over in the 80th minute, but no, France held on to the ball and carried on playing for another minute. Then alas, they finally kicked out the ball and England’s hopes were dashed. So near yet so far. Despite that, I did enjoy all the games.