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glindaI started writing this at the start of the month, and it's been sitting half-written ever since.
I absolutely did not make my stretch goal, and I wrote slightly less than I did last November but I decided against pushing myself too much because I didn't want to burn myself out and then not be able to write anything else this year. I'm really pleased that I'm only a tiny bit shy of 60% of my target for the year, for the first time in quite some time I think I might actually make 50,000 words for the year. (Or at least I was until it took me about 10 days to write this entry.)
I did manage to squeeze in another small DIY success. When I had my ensuite bathroom re-done a couple of years ago *eye twitch* sides of the shower cubicle were too tall for me to use the existing little hanging basket for my shower stuff. My dad gave me one that sticks in place (one of those 'rental friendly options' for when you can't drill holes, as neither he nor I fancied drilling into my shiny new wet wall, and it's been sitting in a bag ever since. I stumbled across it during my epic autumn clean at the start of the month and did indeed get it up by the end of the month which is it's own victory.
Crochet has been going well, the crab continues to progress well - 'turn' did mean what I thought it did - I didn't make as much progress as I hoped while I was away for work as I ended up reading a third of my new non-fiction book - The Golden Road by William Dalrymple - and I found a little cross-stitch kit in my rucksack and ended up stitching quite a bit of it instead. Also I did another class this weekend with my crochet buddy M - she was originally a roller derby pal, but neither of us skate any more and we've started doing craft classes together this year - to make crochet baubles. They're super cute and I learned a bunch of skills in the process - I can change colours, and add in new balls of yarn and learned the 'granny square stitch' and using slip stitch to join thing - so that I now feel that I've 'leveled up'? I'm starting to be able to look at a row or stitch and see where I've gone wrong. Not just noticing I've gone wrong and thinking 'what've I done?' but able to see what's wrong. Not always but sometimes.
In deeply middle aged news, I bought an air fryer.
I kinda object to the whole Black Friday thing, these are sales spun off from another country's holiday why are we having them here, but if I actually want some new electronics at this time of year it seems daft not to take advantage of a sale. I got the better model with dehydration mode for the price I'd planned to spend on the basic model. I also got new bluetooth headphones too, because the band of my old ones literally snapped in my hand when I was putting them on that Friday, and they're great, much better battery life. The reviews were hilariously sniffy about the 'bass heavy' nature of this brand, but grudgingly acknowledged that if you were listening to bass heavy dance music at the gym that might be a plus. And yes I do have a bass heavy dance music playlist for the gym that sounds great on them, but you know what, so does my playlist of mellow trad and atmospheric modern classical. (Podcasts also sound fine? Some higher voices might sound a little thinner but honestly much better than many most headphones I've owned short of my good cans - which I bought for sound recording so are high end sennheisers - and the point of foldable bluetooth headphones was so I didn't need to cart my good cans around with me where they might get damaged.) I didn't bother with noise cancelling ones but these ones have nice cushion-y cups that do a nice job of keeping out most sounds in speech range while still letting me hear approaching vehicles and warning beeps.
Anyway. Airfryer. It's such a cliche but it's honestly great. I'd been thinking for ages about replacing my oven which is old but perfectly decent as an oven but it's one with the grill in the same compartment rather than a seperate one and the grill section is rubbish. But to replace it with the kind I want involves getting a joiner out - it's a fitted kitchen - and co-ordinating joiners and new oven delivery and installation is just a nightmare so it keeps getting pushed down the priority list. But people keep raving to me about how much they love their airfryer and they're reasonable prices now, so it occurred that actually it would probably solve my grill issues while also letting me oven cook small amounts of things it seems a waste to put the oven on for. Plus, there's loads of recipes I've wanted to try but have been avoiding because you're supposed to deepfry them and deepfrying gives me the fear. Safer and also healthier! So far I've mostly used it for garlic bread with my leftover pasta bake and to revive weekend pain au chocolat. (Thank you, random bloke reviewing the airfryer on the curry's website, clearly responding to a nagging 'please review your recent purchase ' email, who said he'd only used it make sunday morning freezer croissants so far and was pleased with how they'd come out. That hadn't occurred to me and it's brilliant, lightly crisped outsides, melty chocolate inside, in 7 minutes including pre-heat, my actual oven takes forever to pre-heat and feels like a complete waste of electricity for one croissant!) But I'm excited to try making my own spring rolls and fritters over the holidays. Though I suspect I'm mostly going to value it for being able to cook small amounts of things quickly.
10983 / 10000 (109.83%)
I absolutely did not make my stretch goal, and I wrote slightly less than I did last November but I decided against pushing myself too much because I didn't want to burn myself out and then not be able to write anything else this year. I'm really pleased that I'm only a tiny bit shy of 60% of my target for the year, for the first time in quite some time I think I might actually make 50,000 words for the year. (Or at least I was until it took me about 10 days to write this entry.)
44592 / 75000 (59.46%)
I did manage to squeeze in another small DIY success. When I had my ensuite bathroom re-done a couple of years ago *eye twitch* sides of the shower cubicle were too tall for me to use the existing little hanging basket for my shower stuff. My dad gave me one that sticks in place (one of those 'rental friendly options' for when you can't drill holes, as neither he nor I fancied drilling into my shiny new wet wall, and it's been sitting in a bag ever since. I stumbled across it during my epic autumn clean at the start of the month and did indeed get it up by the end of the month which is it's own victory.
Crochet has been going well, the crab continues to progress well - 'turn' did mean what I thought it did - I didn't make as much progress as I hoped while I was away for work as I ended up reading a third of my new non-fiction book - The Golden Road by William Dalrymple - and I found a little cross-stitch kit in my rucksack and ended up stitching quite a bit of it instead. Also I did another class this weekend with my crochet buddy M - she was originally a roller derby pal, but neither of us skate any more and we've started doing craft classes together this year - to make crochet baubles. They're super cute and I learned a bunch of skills in the process - I can change colours, and add in new balls of yarn and learned the 'granny square stitch' and using slip stitch to join thing - so that I now feel that I've 'leveled up'? I'm starting to be able to look at a row or stitch and see where I've gone wrong. Not just noticing I've gone wrong and thinking 'what've I done?' but able to see what's wrong. Not always but sometimes.
In deeply middle aged news, I bought an air fryer.
I kinda object to the whole Black Friday thing, these are sales spun off from another country's holiday why are we having them here, but if I actually want some new electronics at this time of year it seems daft not to take advantage of a sale. I got the better model with dehydration mode for the price I'd planned to spend on the basic model. I also got new bluetooth headphones too, because the band of my old ones literally snapped in my hand when I was putting them on that Friday, and they're great, much better battery life. The reviews were hilariously sniffy about the 'bass heavy' nature of this brand, but grudgingly acknowledged that if you were listening to bass heavy dance music at the gym that might be a plus. And yes I do have a bass heavy dance music playlist for the gym that sounds great on them, but you know what, so does my playlist of mellow trad and atmospheric modern classical. (Podcasts also sound fine? Some higher voices might sound a little thinner but honestly much better than many most headphones I've owned short of my good cans - which I bought for sound recording so are high end sennheisers - and the point of foldable bluetooth headphones was so I didn't need to cart my good cans around with me where they might get damaged.) I didn't bother with noise cancelling ones but these ones have nice cushion-y cups that do a nice job of keeping out most sounds in speech range while still letting me hear approaching vehicles and warning beeps.
Anyway. Airfryer. It's such a cliche but it's honestly great. I'd been thinking for ages about replacing my oven which is old but perfectly decent as an oven but it's one with the grill in the same compartment rather than a seperate one and the grill section is rubbish. But to replace it with the kind I want involves getting a joiner out - it's a fitted kitchen - and co-ordinating joiners and new oven delivery and installation is just a nightmare so it keeps getting pushed down the priority list. But people keep raving to me about how much they love their airfryer and they're reasonable prices now, so it occurred that actually it would probably solve my grill issues while also letting me oven cook small amounts of things it seems a waste to put the oven on for. Plus, there's loads of recipes I've wanted to try but have been avoiding because you're supposed to deepfry them and deepfrying gives me the fear. Safer and also healthier! So far I've mostly used it for garlic bread with my leftover pasta bake and to revive weekend pain au chocolat. (Thank you, random bloke reviewing the airfryer on the curry's website, clearly responding to a nagging 'please review your recent purchase ' email, who said he'd only used it make sunday morning freezer croissants so far and was pleased with how they'd come out. That hadn't occurred to me and it's brilliant, lightly crisped outsides, melty chocolate inside, in 7 minutes including pre-heat, my actual oven takes forever to pre-heat and feels like a complete waste of electricity for one croissant!) But I'm excited to try making my own spring rolls and fritters over the holidays. Though I suspect I'm mostly going to value it for being able to cook small amounts of things quickly.
