The Bluestocking: it's the season of mulled wine, conversations about pineapple and, of course, gerbils. Confused? You will be...

[EdithStourton]

Welcome to the anarchic and marvellous women-only on-line pub, the Bluestocking. The booze won't give you a hangover, the cakes won't make you fat, and the conversations are fascinating, covering knitting, health and safety, the Muppets and anything else that comes to mind.

Climb Peak Woo, have a cuddle with Rosie the Red Panda, and watch out for capybaras busy with any necessary building works.

Welcome in (and name change at the door if you need too).

Click your brain onto 45 and you'll soon catch up. Although we'll all sound like we've inhaled helium.

Pinky and Perky version perhaps?

Or chipmunks!

I dread to think what the gerbils would sound like speeded up! I suspect only Colin would be able to hear them.

It would probably put him in a right spin.

I would just like to say my daily task torture has borne fruit

Today's task was made so much easier by previous days tasks.

I required a set of steps, a hammer and some upholstery tacks.

The steps were easily accessible because I'd already tidied the cupboard they reside in.

The hammer that would have taken me a few back bedroom box guesses was in box 24 and the upholstery tacks in box 20 thanks to my alphabetical index of box items with diagram of where each number box was (all 40 of them). I saved myself from opening at least another 10 plus boxes!

I'm a happy beetle (only 30 daily tasks left!)

😁

Loving the organisation there!

😂😂

Welcome, LordEmsworthsGirlfriend, sorry I wasn't here earlier to join in the welcomes.
I'm glad you finally decided to enter the Bluestocking - I walked up and down outside for quite a while before I felt brave enough to open the door. So glad I did, and I hope you will be too.

It looks like you'll fit right in🙃

Boily, what an achievement, you are an example to us all....damn you!😁

G'night all🌛

You clearly know your guns. I don't own a gun but I borrow a 26" .410 over and under when we go shooting. It's supposed to be a kid's gun but it fits my 5'0 frame nicely.

I noticed that the gerbils are armed with combat rather than field weapons. Have they been properly trained? Tommy guns and other submachine guns were never meant to be accurate so don't stand beside anyone who is about to light up with one. The modern SA80/2, on the other hand, is a precision rifle. Does it still need a forward assist?

The wealth and depth of knowledge here is astounding.

When we were told the gerbils were on holiday in Benidorm, were they really on combat training and didn’t want to worry us?

This reel from facebook strikes me as something that belongs here...

https://www.facebook.com/reel/867350702397260

It was both.

I have ripped it and I'm doing another pattern.

The bit you marked in red is the edge of the knitting. I slip the first stitch and knit into the back of the last stitch, so they make a neater edge. The green circled stitch is either a knit through back loop stitch or a slipped stitch. There is also a strand of yarn lying on the edge.

I was knitting on circular needles as though they were straight and a basket weave, k2,p8,k2 / p2,k8,p2 for four rows, then two rows to make stocking stitch then p4,k4,p4 / k4,p4,k4 for for rows. I had 90 stitches but miscounted my garter stitch border. I thought it was k3 but it was actually sl1,k3 and k3,ktbl. So instead of 84 stitches I had 82 and I fudged it.

I've attached an image of the new work.

I have tried to sleep.

I wore socks. No caffeine since 1pm. Earplugs. Headband with speakers and a podcast or six.

I put on a longsleeved pyjama top over my shortsleeved pyjama top.

Then I was hot but also freezing. I got up.

I ate blueberries. Then pistachios. They're a bit stale because the Walrus doesn't eat nuts and I rarely scour the cupboard for snacks.

I put on a warm dressing gown because I'm freezing and also hot.

I have given in and made tea.

When I lived alone I would get up and make tea and read a book till I was sleepy. Now I find I don't want to wake anyone so I feel awkward about getting up.

Then I realised it will be nine years next week since I last lived alone. So I'm going to try to stop feeling awkward and if he wakes up, that's tough.

Welcome @LordEmsworthsGirlfriend ! I have discovered that it is best to believe that it's all real. So when someone talks about the second gun cupboard and the gerbils' training weekend in Benidorm, I nod and smile and think, but of course we need a second gun locker and it's a shame about the backgammon snug, but we can always build another one, maybe on the show floor (lovely penthouse suites up there).

So when I came round from a general anaesthetic to see a nurse wearing a large keyring in the shape of a hamster (I checked), I could believe that the gerbils had sent a cousin to the hospital to make sure I was fine.

Feel free to make stuff up. We'll join in.

Holy Mother, for an appalled non-quite-woken-up moment I thought the gerbils had been equipped with lethal weaponry.

In this weather even the supersoakers and bubble blasters are better deployed outside well away from the Inn. Maybe they could ask the capybaras to let them warm up before they come back on duty.

And perhaps the gun rooms could be re-designated as Tunnocks pantries.

I fear that even as it is there are going to be random bubbles and damp rodents all over the place.

I thought that what happened in Benidorm was meant to stay in Benidorm?

@MyrtleLion do you have a kindle? I used to feel a bit bad reading with the light on when DH went to sleep but with a kindle I don't need a light on.

Poor Myrtle, I hope you got back to sleep after that. The moon will be full just after 6pm on Thursday, so you were probably partly suffering from that (and might be for the next few days).

You could try camomile tea, poppy seed sandwiches, a fleece blanket ready to be pulled over cold feet might help. Or might not.

Good morning all, I've just read through last night's shenanigans and now have an earworm of " Rip it up and start again" by Orange Juice. I blame that on Myrtle's knitting.

Oh, don’t we have a platoon of desert rats for that sort of thing? (jerboas, sounds similar but they’re a different rodent).

hope Myrtle is now asleep still.
DH is a bad sleeper - we have the luxury of separate bedrooms so if he wakes in the ‘witching hours’ he can read as much as he wants. He does sometimes get up and make a drink - mostly it doesn’t wake me but even if it does it’s usually only momentary.

At this time of year there are more hours of darkness than we need to sleep, I believe it used to be quite normal for people to have a waking period in the middle of the night when they’d get up and do something.

I definitely sleep more in the winter. Maybe I'm more bear than puffin. Or human!

Have a Christmas joke.

I'm sorry you had a bad night, Myrtle. It's knackering when you can't sleep till 3am, then wake at 6.30.

I went out like a light last night, then woke up at about 5.30. Slept again, and had a rather lovely dream that I'd returned home from an outing to discover that DH had acquired a 4 month old puppy, like Batshit in looks and Brains in personality, because her previous owners had acquired more dog than they could handle. She was obviously at the larger end of the breed standard and was delightful. I was quite disappointed to wake up and find that she didn't exist.

Jane, I'm not well up on modern guns like SA80s. I'm also a terrible shot (though don't tell any intruders), which doesn't bother me as I'd rather be working the dog. But I know enough about older combat weapons to get annoyed by some historians who can't tell a Bren from a Sten or (in one particularly irksome case) a rifle from a shotgun.

I just realised i had not pressed the watch button, (did’nt it used to be automatic if you posted?)

so i have missed some fun boo hoo.